


Flyboys

by aerialiste



Series: Flyboys [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Air Force, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BDSM, Bondage, Crossover, Fighter Pilots, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Major Character Injury, Military, PTSD, Past Character Death, Post-Canon, Rope Bondage, Therapy, Trauma, US Air Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-05-13 14:05:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 28
Words: 99,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14750288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerialiste/pseuds/aerialiste
Summary: John Sheppard is on convalescent leave—or at least that’s what he keeps telling himself, though it looks a lot more like hiding in a crappy apartment in Houston, never leaving except for physical therapy and more alcohol. So he’s not sure why he turns up at a kink club, much less why he starts hanging out with Sam Wilson, probably the only other guy on the planet with a tighter security clearance than his—not that either of them much wants to talk about work.Two airmen, both with troubled pasts, find solace in each other one humid Gulf Coast summer. And the strength of the pull John feels toward Sam surprises him more than the odds of their meeting at all.





	1. Grounded

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seperis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seperis/gifts).



_Some things that fly there be –_  
_Birds – Hours – the Bumblebee –  
_ _Of these no Elegy._

_Some things that stay there be –_  
_Grief – Hills – Eternity –  
_ _Nor this behooveth me._

_There are that resting, rise._  
_Can I expound the skies?  
_ _How still the Riddle lies!_

_[Dickinson, F68, 1859]_  
  
  


_•_

Sheppard leaned the weight of his hip against the bar table, freeing up one hand to hold the bottle of Corona. He shoved a tiny lime wedge into the neck with his left hand, awkwardly, everything slippery and wet with condensation. His cane rested against his thigh, but when he moved it slid, and he grabbed for the handle again before it could fall, shifting his weight back onto it and taking a quick swig of beer. Safely off to one side, he watched the action out on the decently-sized dance floor, its couple dozen inhabitants sweaty and to all appearances very happy, or at least vocal. The club lit up in a blare of bright purple, with a blast of illuminated dry ice. Unseen hands from the DJ booth above flung out neon glow sticks, which scattered on the booze-slick floor and were grabbed up by the dancers. They didn’t seem to care whether the pastel plastic sticks were damp or sticky, just locked them into circles, dangled them around neck or wrist, and kept moving.

He wondered again why he was at Numbers, on a Tuesday night of all nights—“Kinky Tuesdays,” the club billed them, but Sheppard hadn’t seen anything particularly kinky yet, even though there was a large bright red X-shaped cross on the stage, presumably for tying people down in some kind of fancy way. Earlier, an elderly man had energetically suspended a very curvy, very pretty, frighteningly young woman in athletic wear above the same stage, with the overall effect being more like a gym workout than anything sadomasochistic. Maybe it was still too early? It was just coming up on twenty-one-hundred.

When he’d gotten his beer at the cash bar in the back, he’d stolen glances at the many folding tables draped in black felt and displaying various wares, mostly what he guessed were floggers or whips of some specialized kind—Sheppard had to admit he didn’t actually know anything about the kink scene, or kink at all, really, other than the porn that freaked him out almost as much as it turned him on. The truth was, it was almost impossible for him to get turned on ever since he’d gone on convalescent leave. Or maybe for a long time before that. The long scar down his leg pulled and grabbed, and he winced and tried to stand straighter, to take pressure off his thigh and knee.

The dance music had been rigorously ’80s, so far: he’d heard Erasure, New Order, Joy Division, and now a sped-up triphop version of “Psychokiller.” Back in its day, which was apparently no longer, Numbers had brought to Montrose a staggering variety of real bands, from The Cure to Jesus and Mary Chain, from Siouxie and the Banshees to Soundgarden, all of which had probably been amazing shows in its modest square black room, banked on all four sides by bars; but now they were mostly content to host a burlesque night once a week, Kinky Tuesdays, and something on Fridays called “Classic Numbers” that Sheppard figured was probably more of the nostalgic same.

The crowd was eclectic, though, and in good spirits, and he mostly enjoyed watching them. There were a few elderly couples, dancing pressed up close to one another even during the fast songs; one bald angular white guy out in the middle of the floor, who hopped straight up and down and mouthed all the words; a drunk couple weaving unsteadily on the fringes, more making out than dancing; a group of gorgeous young guys (too young, faces anxious and self-conscious) in booty shorts and Vans; several isolated vaqueros in studded leather jackets and cowboy boots; and a collection of flawlessly made-up young women (also too young) he referred to in his head as “kinky ballerinas,” because of the stiff pastel tutus that stood out from their gleaming PVC bustiers. He wasn’t sure how they’d actually be able to do anything kinky, though; they seemed frail, delicate in a way, eyeshadow unsettlingly winged and perfect, far too flawless to mess up. Occasionally, on the stage, someone would jump up to dance while facing the small crowd, gyrating and lip-syncing in a slightly more performative fashion. A muscular, heavy-set black guy with swinging locs danced all by himself and seemed to be completely content.

No one looked his way. John drank his beer. He could feel the bass line in the palms of his hands when he rested them briefly on the table top.

The DJ had just shifted into “Head Like a Hole” and Sheppard found himself involuntarily nodding along—his lazy, middle-aged version of a headbang, he supposed—when he saw an empty beer bottle rolling around on the black floor, glittering dangerously near the dancers’ heels, kicked aside and gaining momentum as it spun in circles. He looked away; whatever, he wasn’t going to go get it.

Which is why, of course, clenching his cane, rubber tip gripping the floor, he strode out quickly, tucking in his elbows and sidling in sideways to evade oblivious dancers—only to reach the bottle and realize he’d have to bend down, which he couldn’t really do. He stuck the cane out far to his left side, for balance, and attempted an ungainly downward swoop without bending his knees.

The wet bottle skittered out from under his fingers and rolled to a stop against a single Nike Air Pegasus, charcoal gray with a white swoosh. Sheppard only knew the model because they were what he ran in, himself, when he wasn’t just wearing his boots. Used to run in. Whatever. He gritted his teeth in pain, raised his head: dark jeans, closely fitted to lean, muscled thighs. Definitely a runner. Trying to straighten all the way, he wobbled and nearly fell over about the time he came eye-level with the person’s waist (belt of plain black webbing, thick silver buckle that looked familiar but he couldn’t think why). A strong hand shot out and grabbed him by the bicep.

“Hey, careful,” the guy said, close to his ear, with an unfairly velvety voice, soft yet still cutting through Trent Reznor’s repeated vows that someone was going to get what they deserved. John’s cane flew out of his grasp, and seemingly without any effort the guy caught that too, and pressed it back into his hand. “Hang on,” the man said, and bent down to pick up the errant bottle himself, still holding to Sheppard’s arm; then: “Let’s just—” and Sheppard didn’t protest as the guy all but manhandled him off the dance floor; slipping once, because John was stupid and had worn his dress oxfords, which didn’t have any tread to speak of. He knew better.

The guy steered them into the back of the club, into the relative quiet of the cash bar, and arced the beer bottle into a trash can, only then letting go of John’s arm to offer his hand. “Hi, I’m Sam. Look, man, I’m sorry I grabbed you, that’s pretty rude, I just—”

“Sheppard. It’s fine,” he was astonished to hear himself saying, when nothing about it was fine, when normally anyone even looking at the cane made him want to knock out their brains with it. He shook Sam’s hand, which was warm and solid and brown, and he held it longer than he should. Something else about him, though; the belt buckle—Sheppard looked up again.

“Air Force?” he asked, on a guess, and Sam threw back his head and laughed. He had a gap between his front teeth that made him seem probably younger than he was (early thirties?), and a trimmed moustache and hint of beard that made him seem a little older (late thirties?).

“That obvious, huh.”

John shrugged, settling his weight back onto the cane under his hand. It had started feeling comfortable, something he felt a little lost without. He didn’t much like that, but there it was. “Off we go, into the wild blue something.”

“Shit, you too?” Sam pulled a bar stool closer without taking his eyes off John, and Sheppard nudged himself back onto it, hardly noticing. Sam was wearing a grey t-shirt made out of some silky material that did nothing to conceal the movement of his shoulders or the way his waist narrowed down into his hips. Sheppard swallowed, wondering vaguely why he’d left his beer behind.

Sam tapped the counter meaningfully and the bartender nodded, came back uncapping two Shiner Bocks. “How often am I gonna meet another airman here? Drink’s on me, man.”

“Fair enough,” said Sheppard, and they tilted their bottles together. It was weirdly easy to sit next to Sam without talking, but he was curious.

“So what do you fly?”

Sam smiled and it was kind of ridiculously dazzling, like the sun coming out. “I never said pilot.”

Sheppard took an experimental swallow of the Shiner, which was earthen and malty. He liked it. He wiped his mouth and tried another angle.

“Where’d you start out, then?”

“Man, that was a million years ago,” Sam said. He took a drink of beer, looking thoughtful. “After basic, all over. Just the pipeline, for pararescue anyway. Indoc at Lackland. Mostly Kirtland, Benning. Few weeks at Fort Bragg.”

Sheppard’s eyebrows shot up. “Jesus—you’re a PJ?”

Sam’s face went neutral, like he got this reaction a lot. “Well, someone’s gotta do it. Save the rest of y’all’s sorry asses.”

Sheppard had once seen a brigadier general scramble to give up his place in line at dining services so a parajumper could go ahead of him. _The pipeline_ , Sam had said, offhand, like he wasn’t describing two years of pure torture, which airmen respectfully called _Superman School_ but which most civilians would probably consider something that could legitimately be tried in a court of international law.

And Fort Bragg—John felt an unfamiliar stab of pure envy. “You got to train on parafoils?”

Sam smiled, a little ruefully. “Yeah, if there’s something that can kill you I’ve probably tried to crash it at least once.”

“NFOD, huh,” said Sheppard, and took another drink, reaching inside himself for some former social skill he’d surely once had, the ability to be casual and teasing. “I don’t know—if it doesn’t go at least two thousand miles an hour, is it even worth getting out of bed for.”

“Okay, I see how it is,” said Sam, amused. “You drivers all alike, think you _invented_ danger.” He studied Sheppard, openly, not hiding it, face speculative. “So…obviously not enlisted. I’m gonna say, Aluminum U.”

Like Patrick Sheppard would have let his son do something as gauche as attend the Air Force Academy. Even Stanford had been a laboriously achieved series of compromises, if “compromises” meant John ripping apart the acceptance letter, storming out of the house, seventeen and furious, and nearly wrapping his Ducati around a tree.

He laughed, a little shortly. “No. OTS at Maxwell, right after college.”

At this Sam visibly suppressed a double-take, but Sheppard had no idea why. “Where they have you now? Haven’t seen you around Ellington.”

John tried to look noncommittal but he knew he was a horrible liar. He’d qualified on so many fighters and run so many missions that his list of actual assignments looked like a flight map of several continents, but they were all…somewhat dated. He went with his last real posting, for some reason, rather than the fake one. “Just left McMurdo. Helos, mostly; transport.”

Sam let out a long whistle and John told himself grimly that at least it was true. It had just been…almost nine years. Shit, no. Ten years. He needed to change the subject. “So you’re still in?”

“Yeah, I’m in. Tried to leave, once, but probably gonna _be_ in until I go down. You retire?”

John shook his head. “Con leave,” he said, and left it at that. Sam regarded him a little speculatively, and then he nodded.

“Guess that explains why I haven’t seen you on the flight line. You gonna be teaching?”

Sheppard took a long tilt off his beer. It had more bite than the Corona, which he realized was basically watery Bud Light and he couldn’t think why he’d ordered it. Or put a lime in it.

“Yeah, at some point I’ll be,” and he waved his hand to indicate: _later, whenever, something, never, fuck it_. Closed his eyes for a second and took another pull.

When he opened them Sam was watching his face as though he were in some way interesting. He seemed to be listening closely, even though John had stopped talking.

Sheppard felt himself flushing. This wasn’t—he wasn’t. He cleared his throat. “So what’s a PJ doing with a bunch of astronaut trainees anyway?”

Sam smiled, a slow easy thing and it settled something inside Sheppard. “Mostly hanging out underwater. They’re all jockeys, they literally can’t handle the pressure. Me, I spent what felt like most of my goddamn life in the Pool; I just swim laps around them while they panic. Shove their heads back down when they try to come up for air. Do CPR if they drown.”

Sheppard almost laughed, but bit it back. “They let you have any hours in a T-38?”

Sam sighed, and his eyes went a little out of focus as he stared dreamily at the bottles lined up behind the bar. “Yeah, been up a couple times—just the GIB, but so I know what my cones are up against. Those birds, man. They’re stupid little, but they can _move_ , you know? Nimble.”

John nodded. It had been a couple decades, but you never forgot your first fighter. He could still feel it through his hands, the way the Talon handled: light, kind of squirrely, not that fast but able to accelerate at a thought. “Not called _white rockets_ for nothing.”

It wasn’t a bad nickname, as fighter jets went. Worse than _Viper_ ; way better than _gateship._

Sam pulled back his gaze from middle distance and turned to grin at Sheppard just as he took a drink, looking mischievous. “Hey, it’s not _their_ fault they’re white. Yours either, probably.”

John coughed up some beer.

“Uh, yeah, I don’t know. That’s—maybe on me, somehow, too. I’m….” He didn’t know how to finish that sentence, or why he’d even started it. A disaster? A fuck-up? _A murderer,_ his brain supplied unhelpfully, and he shut that down as fast as he thought it. “Uh, I guess not a team player,” he allowed stiffly, turning his bottle in his hands, having literally no idea what he was talking about.

(His team. He’d had a team, with the best people in the—he couldn’t finish that either. Jesus Christ.)

Sam kept looking at him steadily and something about his attentive regard, those clear deep brown eyes made Sheppard feel—what. He didn’t know what. Oh shit; he’d managed to forget completely, somehow: they were at Kinky Tuesdays. Did that mean, was Sam, what did he think was—

“Hey—whatever went down? I’m pretty sure you did your best.” Sam’s hand was on his wrist, warm, and John could feel the strength in his fingers, even resting lightly, just against the skin.

“Yeah, well, you weren’t there,” Sheppard began, more or less automatically, trying to remember why he should pull away.

“Didn’t have to be,” said Sam, gesturing with his other hand toward the bartender again. “I’ve seen enough shit. You got the limp. And the stare. Looks like it’s killing you to be grounded.”

Okay, yeah; no. Suddenly Sheppard had a sharp pain in his throat and his face felt hot. He fumbled for his wallet, dropped a ten. Stood up too fast and had to grip the edge of the bar. Sam let his hand fall away.

“It was—nice to meet you. I should get back.”

Back the fuck _where_ —he wasn’t even on base; he was TDY, was on some ridiculous interminable fake secondment in an anonymous too-new apartment complex in fucking _Pearland_. But Sam didn’t push him, just held his gaze, looking thoughtful, and then nodded carefully, like John was something jumpy he didn’t want to startle. He also didn’t—didn’t lower his eyes or lick his lips or say anything suggestive, or any of the stuff John dimly remembered was part of the way things worked between people, back when he’d cared about it, wanted it. Back before.

Ears ringing, Sheppard somehow found his way out of the bar and out of the club, before things went completely blank. He didn’t lose time that often, anymore. Or not for very long. But when he came to, he was standing all the way down on Mason Street, out beside his beat-up dirty red Camaro, driver’s side door half open, hands digging into its top edge and forehead pressed uncomfortably against the metal ridge, an indefinable burning in his mouth and throat. He wondered what Sam’s last name was; his rank, his tours. Had he seen action in the same places Sheppard had? How had he wound up training astronaut candidates at Johnson? He said he’d flown—did he mean besides R2D2 on a Talon? Could someone even go from parajumper to ATEF, qualify on fighters?

Maybe; just because John didn’t know anyone who had, didn’t mean it couldn’t be done. He was living proof of that shit.

There was a long airless moment before he could get himself in the car, knees still unsteady, toss his cane into the passenger seat, and shift the automatic out of park. Jesus, what a broke-dick. He couldn’t drive stick, because of the clutch; and he apparently couldn’t maintain a normal social interaction for more than ten minutes; and he couldn’t fucking _fly;_ and he couldn’t keep his team members from—

He was a walking AFI: Another Fucking Inconvenience. Sheppard didn’t understand why he was even still alive.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here it is: the USAF BDSM crossover no one asked for and no one will ever read. Why did I believe our profoundly troubled world needed an elaborately pornographic novel about characters from two completely different universes? No idea! But! Here it is anyway! You’re welcome! I’m really sorry!
> 
> The usual caveats: 1) I’ll add tags (and soundtrack and other notes) as I go; 2) there’s a glossary at the end because airmen have their own weirdly beautiful jargon; 3) the whole fic has been written but I’m editing heavily, so will post every Monday and Thursday night, or only Thursdays if things get too busy for me (I have some medical and academic things happening this summer).
> 
> Also, if you're a ride-or-die McShep fan, you should know: that “Past Character Death” tag is not fooling around (or as I once said to a friend, “brb busy heartlessly murdering people in the Pegasus Galaxy”). Now I’m not saying that such people are...gonna stay dead? Like, have you seen the show? But Sheppard would never have left Pegasus otherwise; and we all know this. Hold fast.
> 
> Without the encouragement of [kitt3nz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitt3nz/profile) and [livinginthequestion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/livinginthequestion/profile) I couldn't have persevered. And I probably couldn’t breathe air much less write fiction without my longterm beloved betas: [betts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/profile), [expatgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/expatgirl/profile), and [shiphitsthefan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiphitsthefan/profile); you should go read their stuff too, because it's way better.
> 
> Thank you for being here. If you're reading this, you already know how much I love you.


	2. Waveoff

Damn it all to hell: running with Steve Rogers had forever screwed up Sam’s sense of an appropriate distance per hour. As a normal human he’d been used to clocking in around an easy ten-minute mile; now Sam felt like if he wasn’t pushing eight minutes he was slacking.

He hated hill workouts, but they were crucial if he wanted to keep up his speed. Sam made a face, because Steve wasn’t there to see it, then upped the treadmill’s level of difficulty, concentrating on keeping his form while moving out a little faster. He preferred to run outside on the flat gravel Seabrook trails—they were part of why he’d rented the summer condo—but an early cold summer rain was spitting outside, and he didn’t feel like dealing with it until he had to make the drive into Houston to the VA hospital.

Even after he’d left DC, he hadn’t been able to stop himself from volunteering again, a couple evenings a week. The LCSWs at DeBakey were grateful to have another social worker on hand, even an unlicensed one—or one licensed in DC rather than Texas—and Sam thought it was good for him to keep leading groups. Kept him out of his head; kept him steady.

His phone buzzed, on the treadmill cradle, and despite himself he looked at it. Hill, so he didn’t answer. Steve, now, or more rarely Natasha when she bothered to call, they got an automatic pick-up, no matter how little he felt like talking. He lifted the hem of his t-shirt and wiped his face, sweating even in the air-conditioned gym. Htown wasn’t that different from DC, in the humidity department. The food was maybe worse, except for crawdad boils, and Shipley Do-Nuts; and the trainees were okay, but nothing was ever really going to compare to the solid gut-clenching thrill of an EXO.

Back on the flat again, he caught his breath and thought about the guy at the club on Tuesday. Wary, cautious; your average wounded bird—he’d been trying so hard to hold his cards close to his chest, too. Probably would’ve killed him to know how easy Sam had found him to read. Definitely punched out, which would explain the limp; definitely lost someone, probably during some furball of a knife fight—a wingman, hell, maybe his whole squadron—which would explain the stare. Afghanistan, Iraq; maybe OIR? Something experimental, probably.

But why still on leave? Even if he couldn’t fly, he could be at weapons school. And why the hell McMurdo—which sounded like deliberate punishment, like an Article 15. It occurred to Sam he could ask Nat or Tony, but he pushed that thought away and concentrated on the next hill, trying to bounce off his midsoles, moving his upper arms and elbows economically, breathing in fours.

Something about the guy, though; something off. Military posture, but his hair was…putting it politely, a disaster: long on top, spiky and floppy and dark on its way to steel gray, nothing regulation about it. Either some kind of dirtbag airman, or maybe that con leave taking its toll. He’d seemed a little more unhinged than most of the recently discharged Sam worked with, maybe, if not by much. Sam saw vets like him every week, looking like if they didn’t talk they were going to fly apart into pieces, but also terrified by what might come out if they opened their mouths. He felt a little bad—he’d probably pushed him too hard. But sometimes these guys needed the shove.

Sam had noticed him right away but wasn’t going to approach him; Sheppard had been leaning self-consciously against one of the tall circular tables, sleeves rolled up, forearms crossed, looking defiant, like he was expecting to be dressed down. Was he even kinky or just there for the two-dollar beer? He definitely wasn’t straight, but maybe he didn’t know that. He’d gone pliant under Sam’s hands when Sam had moved him off the dance floor; his jaw set but there was something about the way he held his mouth, the careful shape of it, an unexpected softness in his eyes. Sam hadn’t been able to tell what color they were, in the dark of the club, but light-colored, maybe they were gray too—

He shook his head. “Can it, Wilson,” he muttered under his breath, and inhaled deeply before one last sprint. Not here to get messed up with yet another messed-up white guy. He’d learned his lesson. Not here to think about the goddamn color of some closeted asshole officer’s goddamn _eyes_.

(Steve’s: unsettlingly, unnaturally blue. Riley’s: rich brown, the same color as his own. Fuck.)

It all begged the question of what he _was_ here for, though, and that was a little dicier. Sam wiped his face with his t-shirt again, and slowed the treadmill’s pace for a cool-down. He needed to text Sarah back about dinner with her in the kids, now that there _was_ a Sarah.

Because, of all the things he hadn’t expected in the aftermath of the helicarriers, with Rogers still in the hospital, he definitely wouldn’t have anticipated a voicemail from someone claiming to be his half-sister. His parents had been dead for so many years he’d just gotten used to thinking of himself as without family; and when Sarah and he started chatting over Skype, it turned out they had more in common than Sam would’ve guessed, not just a dad with a wandering eye. Genetics, maybe. Or some particularly Wilson brand of gutsiness, crossed with a predictably unerring instinct for finding trouble.

Because Sarah served, too: Texas National Guard, and was also enrolled full-time in the University of Houston School for Social Work. She had the wide, easy Wilson smile and a nose piercing with a gold hoop, a thick cloud of tiny braids all over her head, and a habit of standing with one hand on her hip while dispensing a level of snark that made Sam have to fight back a grin. And when she invited him to come down to visit, “just, you know, clear _out_ of that place, Sam—get that whole superhero nonsense off your _shoulders_ for a while,” Sam found himself giving his notice at the VA and subletting his apartment till September, while splitting his phone time between Stark and Johnson Space Center, as the former finagled him a temporary instructor posting at the latter, just through the summer, until he’d made up his mind whether to go back in the USAF or stay in DC for Cap. But he wanted to get to know Sarah, and the kids, since they were his only surviving family members. Sam made a face and wiped more sweat off his face with the hand towel, nudging up the already steep angle of the hill he was running.

And of course he’d misdirected Sheppard, more than a little; he wasn’t just training astronaut candidates to stay reasonably calm while fumbling with equipment under forty feet of water, but currently flight-testing the next generation of EXO versions—now bankrolled by Stark and designed by someone he’d never met named Shuri, who’d together kicked in a slew of new designs for what they called ecstatically in the emails, “living vibranium.” (Sam tried not to think about the _living_ part too much, just focused on the schematics and feeling out how the prototypes flew: maneuverability, recovery from whatever abuse he could inflict on them, like too-steep dives and displacement rolls and, best of all, wingovers. No Fear of Death, alright. He had a six-figure life insurance policy with Sarah and the kids named as his beneficiaries.)

Steve had been so floored by Sam’s announcement that he’d not only stammered but _cursed_. Sam had actually felt kind of proud of him.

“I don’t get it, Sam. We all thought you would be sticking around. We’re down by two, with Bruce and Thor out, and I thought, after what happened—we need you. Tony needs you. Shit, _I_ need you.”

He’d shaken his head, sifting through the piles of mail that had accumulated during Steve’s hospital stay, trying to relegate bills to some kind of order in an accordion file. “I know, man, and I would, I really would. But you’ve got Bucky. And I’m good to fly, for the first time in a really long time. I got you and Natasha to thank for that, for getting me back in the air. And now I need this. At least,” he amended, “For now. Just to be sure I’m really doing it, if I get back in the mix with you.”

Steve had deployed the eyes then, huge wounded pools of blue, and Sam figured he wasn’t doing it on purpose but still had to fight not to look at him, frowning exaggeratedly instead at a copy of his new motorcycle inspection before filing it under _K_ for _Kawasaki_. The Z-1000 was a bit of a crotch rocket, sure; but when Stark had offered a one-off paycheck “for services rendered,” Sam wasn’t about to say no, especially since it now meant he had a hotter bike than Steve’s preposterous Harley.

“Bucky’s not the only one I care about,” Steve had finally said. “I can care about more than one person.” Like Sam didn’t know this. Like Sam didn’t see the way Steve and Natasha could communicate silently without even looking at each other, like he didn’t make Steve dinner and all but wrap him in blankets and pet his hair every time he crawled back from seeing Peggy in the goddamn nursing home.

Sam gave up at that point. He dropped the stack of mail on the table and looked back at Steve, resigned. Stupidly pretty as usual, Rogers was also totally unconscious about the effect he had on other people, his white t-shirt practically painted onto his ridiculous flawless body. And that was it, or part of it—Steve didn’t know the effect he had, needed him purely as a friend, and Sam _got_ that, he did, and that was _fine_. It was _great_. But he knew exactly how Bucky fit into the picture, now. He’d seen the same look on Steve’s face that he was pretty sure he’d once had on his own whenever he turned to watch Riley touch down behind him, exowings shimmering, everything slightly unreal in the heat and light of the Registan. Like something blurry and distant as a desert had suddenly come into sharp, riveting focus.

Because now, for Steve, there was Bucky again. Because just as they were preparing to mount a full-scale manhunt across Eastern Europe for a brainwashed Barnes, Bucky had turned up at Steve’s apartment door in Brooklyn around sunset, the evening before they were supposed to ship out. He’d been a little unshaven and a lot confused, speaking mostly Russian and trying to tell Steve and Natasha something urgent about the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Nat sat up with him most of the night, and by morning Bucky has mostly stopped shaking, and started trying to eat one of the muffins Sam had brought over from Amy’s, though he could mostly only sip at the coffee.

When Bucky was in the room, he was the only thing Steve could see. Sam knew what that was like.

“No one’s saying you don’t, Cap,” he finally replied, using the nickname deliberately. “We’re always gonna be tight, and if shit goes sideways, you call me first. You _know_ that’s how it is. Bucky decides to, I don’t know, go full-tilt on HYDRA, or you and Natasha have to go on the lam, you can hide out in my bathroom, use my hair products.” Steve laughed, unhappily. “It’s Houston, not Asgard. I can fly back in a couple hours. But this is about family, okay? Don’t act like you don’t get that. It’s just for the summer, just for right now, but I’m doing something I have to do.”

 _And it’s finally not because of Riley_ , he thought. But Steve hadn’t ever asked much about that, and Sam didn’t volunteer. Plus how do you explain, to Captain freaking America of all people, your pre-DADT-repeal kinky interracial gay relationship? Steve knew about the part where Riley’d been shot down, and about the part where Sam couldn’t stand the thought of going up without him; but even Sam wasn’t ready to share the rest. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

He kicked off his running shorts, stripped off the soaked t-shirt and stood in one of the gym’s slate-tiled shower stalls, letting the water pound down on the top of his head, eyes closed, wondering what he really was doing here. Spending time with Sarah and the kids; that was good. Flying again, without anything in hot pursuit trying to kill him—that was good, too. Threading the Kawasaki illegally through the parking-lot standstill traffic of I-45; standing on the Kemah boardwalk watching as brown pelicans skimmed the tops of waves; sitting in a circle of punchy over-caffeinated vets as one of them started to tell their story for maybe the very first time, halting and brave.

He still kept Riley’s picture; it was underneath clothes in a drawer now, not framed by the side of the bed, but also not hidden in a classified file folder. And he’d just started, _just started_ to think that maybe, as freaky as it was, he could have that or something like it with another person, could find someone else willing to go there with him—

He opened his eyes, looking down at his own wet chest and stomach, and frowned a little. Hanging out with Steven Grant Rogers did no one any favors in the self-esteem department, but Sam didn’t skip ab days, and he figured he could still hold his own. He felt his hipbones with both hands, and then a little lower, letting his head fall back and sighing into the touch, water pulsing down against his throat. The Sheppard guy had tanned forearms, except for a wide pale strip of skin around one wrist, like he’d worn a watch there; only the watch was still there, on his other hand.

Might as well try Tuesday again, next week. See who was there. Didn’t hurt just to see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprisingly exactly no one, Sarah Wilson is played by Rutina Wesley, who's also my girlfriend (she just doesn't know that yet).
> 
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> 
> Happy Memorial Day, petals—and service people everywhere, in all countries and of all ranks: thank you for that service.


	3. Bingo

John approached his email most days with something not unlike pure metallic-taste-in-the-mouth adrenaline, which turned out to mean that most days he didn’t approach it at all. He’d stuck an auto-reply on both his SGC and USAF accounts, and hadn’t had a personal email address for a decade. Somehow this didn’t stop people from contacting him repeatedly, despite the fact that he never wrote any of them back. Not even Beckett. Certainly not Woolsey, or Carter. Jeannie hadn't been in touch, of course, and neither would Keller. He hadn’t even bothered to tell Dave or Nancy he was earthside; didn’t want to deal with condolences from anyone who wasn’t Lantean, who hadn’t been there, who didn’t already know.

Zelenka’s, though—those were the only emails he opened and read. Radek usually included pictures of Teyla or Ronon or the kids, and sometimes stories about them or the city. Sheppard usually had to get drunk to open the attachments, and the jpgs were blurred, but it was mostly worth it.

He missed running, on those days. He missed running most days. The VA hospital had him doing physio and working an arm bike; and he put in dutiful laps in the apartment complex’s pool, even when it was raining. But it wasn’t the same. Swimming was _slow_. John was slow, now, and it maybe wouldn’t have hurt so much if he didn’t have such vivid, visceral memories of being swift and deft. He still _felt_ it, that speed, feet gripping his surfboard charging a swell on the mainland; he could feel it when he went booming through the needle’s eye of a gate without even trying, whole body at the speed of warp heat, shifting his weight involuntarily in sync with the stick like he was in an F-302 instead of a blocky jumper that didn’t need hip movement to pick up on his desired trajectory.

A few hours ago, though, Radek had sent a longer message, this time clearly expecting a reply. The subject line was terse; his English still got more formal when he was annoyed, apparently.

> _From: Radek Zelenka <zelenkaradecek@atlantis.sgc.gov>_  
>  _To: Col. John Sheppard <jumper1@atlantis.sgc.gov>  
>  _ _Date: 1 July 2014, 17:03 PGT  
>  _ _Subject: John, this is enough._
> 
> _I do not wish to disturb your convalescence, but now we have not heard from you almost for the whole two months since you arrived back on the planet, and Teyla asks weekly on her supply trips what you have written me. (Ronon has said nothing but he just looks, you know how.) I know this must be very difficult for you, believe me I know. But if you send only a few words I can at least tell them and we would understand._
> 
> _Everything else here is fine. I work on the ZP3Ms with new equations. We have plenty of power and very few away teams anymore, mostly everyone comes here to trade now that they are not afraid of the culling. In short it is much as you left us. Ronon shows the children over and over the two cartoon movies you sent, that have the brave girls in them, both the Scottish movie and the Scandinavian one, and to be honest I think he now knows all the songs himself._ _Also Teyla sends this picture and says thank you again for your room that they use when they stop over. Torren has been trying to teach Chuck’s daughter how to play football. I will read to them anything you write us._

Radek’s emails always stopped abruptly, often in mid-thought, and in fact this one was more completed than most. Sheppard took a deep breath and opened the attachment. It was a picture of Teyla outside, presumably taken by Kanaan, with the littlest one wrapped up against her chest, standing in front of a wooden fence covered with some kind of fruiting vine climbing up it. Her hair was pulled back and there was a smudge of dirt on her forehead, but she was smiling and radiant and John immediately had to click on one corner to close it.

That still didn’t feel like enough of a gesture, so he slammed the laptop shut, which was more gratifying but also not quite satisfactory. He needed to move—tried to stand, reaching for the cane that he’d left by the front door and suddenly, blind with anger, could taste blood in his mouth—

A moment later he stood leaning on the granite fake fireplace of his apartment, looking down at the computer’s smashed halves; he’d apparently thrown it. One half still had a silvery-white Atlantis logo but it was peeling off, he noted distantly. The thing reminded him of Rodney and he wondered why he hadn’t destroyed it sooner.

“That would be, let me guess—right, because _you miss me_ , you unmitigated idiot,” said McKay, and John stood motionless, rooted to the spot, a cold sweat gathering at the back of his neck, because this needed to stop happening and it had been almost a week, no, over a week, and he had thought he was finished. Like when you had the stomach flu, and went longer and longer between throwing up, and felt like you were better until you got incautious and drank too much water too fast.

He bent stiffly at the waist to try to collect the laptop pieces, immediately bashing his knee into the corner of the coffee table. The apartment had come furnished, and badly at that, all the angles and corners of it wrong—not accommodating, nothing fitting itself around his goddamn genetic code. Hopping to keep his balance, he grabbed for the bottom part of the laptop, which somehow slid just out of his reach. Sheppard straightened up and viciously kicked both halves under the sofa.

“Oh, that’s just excellent. Very mature. You know your PT might be going better if you’d stop chucking objects around like a caged primate, and honestly though you were always kind of a big inarticulate lugnut, this is petulant and prepubescent even for you. It’s not bad enough that you left Atlantis to fend for herself and now you’re in _Texas_ , which, I don’t even know where to _start_ with that horror, so I’ll confine my observations to noting that you’re avoiding your friends, pushing away the very people who _might_ be able to help you, and more or less basting your internal organs in ethanol, which is an especially suspect choice of coping methods because you’re the cheapest date I ever met.”

Rodney was right, of course; Sheppard was usually flushed and slack-jawed by the third beer, more or less. Although he’d been using that to his advantage lately.

There was a long silence and John fervently hoped that was it, that it was done for now. He turned away, pulse hammering in his ears, and stood pretending to look out the glass doors at the patio, which was entirely paved over with cement and had nothing in it except a beer can holding his cigarette butts.

“Also since when has trying to ignore me _ever_ worked in the _entire_ time you’ve known me—it’s like going earthside has somehow reformatted your hard drive, and frankly I’m more than a little wounded that my actual personality has apparently been this easy to forget,” Rodney went on, and the familiar peevishness of it made John’s chest hurt a little.

 _I was never able to ignore you,_ John thought. He didn’t have to say it aloud. _I can’t forget anything._

McKay was silent for a moment in that way that meant he was actually thinking. Sheppard used to feel a small thrill of triumph, which he was of course far too cool to show, whenever he’d actually made Rodney stop talking and have to think.

“Look, Colonel,” McKay began again, in that peremptory way John had once found intensely irritating. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do, especially given that my chances of having you actually listen to me are significantly worse than usual. I’m only telling you that what you _are_ doing isn’t working.”

 _That’s because nothing works_ , John wanted to say, but he was too tired to argue. _Nothing works, you died and it’s my fault and and wherever I go you aren’t there and it’s not Atlantis and nothing works, nothing works, nothing works._

“Oh for god’s sake, stop being so melodramatic,” snapped Rodney. “It’s one of the things about you I love least.”

Fantastic. Not only was his dead best friend still talking to him but now he was making posthumous love confessions. John leaned his head against the cool glass of the sliding doors and figured he was going to have to tell his caseworker about this, which probably meant some kind of horrifying weekly therapy appointment during which he would be expected to talk about his feelings, and retell the story of what happened, in all its ghastly detail. And then, more likely than not, he’d be prescribed a nauseating cocktail, an assortment of drugs which would make him wade through consciousness as if it were mud, while somehow also ensuring he’d never sleep again.

Okay, so he couldn’t sleep anyway. But on medication he also wouldn’t be able to drink.

“True, Brando, but you might not _need_ to drink if you were properly medicated,” Rodney remarked tartly. Sheppard huffed, rolling his forehead back and forth against the glass, feeling insane.

What if he tried talking back to the voice? Would it go away? Or would he just be indulging it, making it worse? “Rodney,” he said carefully, “I told you, we’re done having this conversation.”

“Not even close!” McKay said, with that note of triumph that John knew too well, from Rodney getting you right where he wanted you. The weirdest thing was not being able to tell what direction the voice was coming from. “And by the way, yes, talking back to me means you’re even more in need of qualified mental health assistance than I thought.”

Sheppard swallowed, then closed his eyes. “Come on—what if this happened to you, McKay. You wouldn’t go to therapy. You wouldn’t have _feelings_. You’d die before you’d take anything that…” _might interfere with your mind,_ he was going to say, before he remembered that McKay _had_ died. It had been almost six months, John wasn’t even in Pegasus anymore, why was it so hard to remember.

“Because we didn’t finish our story,” McKay said, as calmly as if he weren’t being unbearable.

This was—no one should have to put up with this. John felt around in his back pocket for the pack of Marlboros, then slid open the screen door and stepped outside. It was starting to rain a little so he stayed under the eaves, cupping his hand around the match until the end had lit. He took a drag, then a longer one, exhaling and flicking a bit of tobacco off the end of his tongue.

“You know what? Fuck you, Rodney. If you’re going to haunt me at least stay in character. Don’t get _romantic_ all of a sudden.”

“That’s exactly why dead people haunt the living, and you know it. We weren’t finished.”

 _We were as finished as we were ever going to be_ , John thought, flashing back to the alien-flowered chuppah in the mess hall, the day McKay and Keller had gotten married, almost two years after they’d flown Atlantis back to the Pegasus galaxy. Teyla had helped make Jennifer’s dress; it was some mysterious shiny Athosian fabric that was green when you looked at it one way, gold from another angle, and she was beautiful in it, pink-cheeked and laughing tearfully. Rodney had been so nervous he’d hyperventilated in the lift and Ronon almost had to carry him the rest of the way. John hadn’t lost the ring. It was 2013 and Sheppard had had almost three whole years during which he could have asked, and he could have told; but he wanted Rodney to be happy, and he wanted them all to stay together, and never talking about any of it had seemed so clearly the only way to have those things that he barely even registered the thought, just leaned into it like some kind of foregone conclusion.

“And yet you, who routinely bill yourself as semi-intelligent, apparently never once thought _I_ might have wanted something different,” Rodney said wonderingly, and John flinched. He stubbed the cigarette out against the side of the building, only half finished, and stuck it back into the pack.

“I mean it, McKay. I’m done talking to you today.” He sharpened his voice, made it a little mean. “Honestly I almost prefer you dead to this.”

If Rodney had been there he would have lifted his hands and taken a placating step backward, looking nervous. “Fine. Suit yourself. Enjoy your misery. I’m just saying.”

Sheppard slid the door closed again and started looking for his keys; he was going to be late for PT. “Yeah, and that’s the fucking problem. You were always just saying. You were talking right up until the last goddamned—”

The living room went noticeably drafty and silent. Sheppard looked around at the textured yellowish walls, curious. He waited. Still nothing.

And now he would have to drive to the hospital, where he would check in at the clinic, do leg presses and stretch giant rubber bands until he was shaky and exhausted, agree with some cheerful, repellently in-shape physical therapist that he was definitely getting better, grit his teeth through stim and hydrotherapy, promise to do exercises at home that he was never going to do, and then drive back again and pretend to eat something that went straight from freezer to microwave, and pretend to watch something that he wouldn’t even be able to remember later, and then maybe worst of all pretend to sleep, lying in the darkness as the pale greenish-grey luminous numbers on his wristwatch ticked past, slow hour after hour after hour, and then somewhere around dawn fall asleep for brief fitful snatches, if you could call it sleep, waking sometime before noon, if you could call it waking, usually coming to consciousness crawling off the foot of the bed clawing at the air trying to reach him, grab at him, pull him back, _McKay, no, wait, I’ve got you, fuck, Rodney no don’t no please no—_

He figured he’d more or less completely lost his mind.

 

 


	4. Blue on Blue

 

 

If Sam dressed a little more carefully this Tuesday, no one needed to know that but him.

He skipped the usual lowkey Dolce & Gabbana tee in favor of a Thomas Pink button-up dress shirt, and stood at the mirror threading a necktie, the one Sarah had given him, through the collar. It was a dark charcoal silk, embossed with diamond shapes, and he thought it looked okay with the pale dove-gray shirt, although—he bit his lip and redid the knot. It was probably too much, but why not. He could watch the suspensions, have his beer, be in bed with _True Detective_ before midnight. He wasn’t even on the roster until Thursday at 0600.

He looked in the mirror a second longer, then snapped off the bathroom light on his way out. Sarah had excellent taste, for which he was grateful—and also grateful, in a strange way, that she hadn’t gotten in touch with him before now. He wasn’t sure how he would have handled, as a kid, the news of Paul’s infidelity, of his having, in another state, a daughter only a little younger than Sam himself.

As it was he’d taken off for basic and then pararescue training fueled by mostly moody orphan loneliness, the desire to be part of something larger than himself, any feeling of family or sense of belonging. And then met Riley at parafoil school, the two of them bonding right away over the dizzy exultation of being dropped, and then opening the sail and catching wind rather than ground.

Sarah sort of reminded him of Riley, sometimes, or he found himself wanting to tell her about him, and this was off-center and unnerving. Because he couldn’t talk about Riley Huel Aucoin—that sly narrow-hipped Southern boy from Lake Charles, Louisiana by way of Hope, Arkansas, skinny kid who’d enlisted to get out of his homophobic hometown and wound up in flight school when it turned out that literally nothing made him puke or pass out; Riley, who attributed this to his yokel cousins performing various acts of cruelty on him, including putting him in a 50-gallon oil drum and rolling him around the pasture. _That_ Riley, the one with the teasing smile and slow wink and a walk that almost but not quite got him in trouble with the XO, and his trick of catching Sam off-guard with an under-the-breath barb or a catty but completely accurate aside—because that Riley had to be his secret, still, after all these years. Because Riley had asked him to promise, and he’d promised.

All that was left of Riley now were the few things Sam had looked at too often, until they’d lost their meaning, until they weren’t infused with him anymore and had become only emptied objects. A few postcards covered in Riley’s cramped cursive, him trying to fit everything onto too small a space; and one letter that Sam never read in full because it was from before they were together and was mostly Riley retelling the plot of a movie. His one photograph of them together, the day they’d first successfully tested the EXO-5. A few things he’d bought Riley to wear when they were off-base: mostly t-shirts, except for a pair of silk boxers and a purple flannel shirt that was (sort of) a joke. Things he’d handled so much they’d never even had the chance to smell like him. It was the smell Sam still missed most, keenly sometimes, or the taste of his skin. The side of his neck, all sweet salt-spray, where Sam would lick and bite when Riley trembled in his arms, head thrown back, hands clutching at Sam for dear life.

Riley’s medals had gone to his mother, whom Sam had never met (“oh my _god_ no, the last thing I’d ever ask you to do is breathe the same air as my white-trash racist-ass family, we’d have to flee for our lives and then probably be followed by the sound of banjos for weeks”)—and so had the canister of ashes, whatever was left of Riley himself. Which hadn’t been a lot, between the RPG and the cremation. Pretty much just twisted dog tags and grief.

Sam had kept his rope, portioned neatly by color and diameter and wrapped into precise hanks, soft and pliable. He took it out from time to time just to handle it, which calmed him, to work it back and forth and keep it flexible. The cuffs and collar he’d destroyed, quietly, privately one night; those were Riley’s, and thus his, because Riley had belonged to him, and so no one else should ever be allowed to touch them. He didn’t remember where the rest of their things had gone—the gags, a blindfold, a few toys for sensation play—but in the same duffle with the rope he’d kept one of the floggers, his favorite, a handcrafted, woven-handled one, with buttery-soft deer suede fringe. The tails hissed as they sang through the air, and Sam appreciated drawing noises out of it almost as much as out of his sub.

Out of…one of his subs? That didn’t sound right. Probably wasn’t ever going to. Not like he could exactly make a profile on FetLife, anyway. Username: The_Falcon. _Internationally notorious semi-Avenger, quasi-criminal, classified test pilot and experienced top seeks someone who won’t be completely freaked out by all that for mostly monogamous, mostly long-term situation. Me: devilishly good-looking, laid-back style, and able to wind your hair in my fist and dom the shit out of you. You: male, preferably pretty limber or at least not averse to being put where I want you and left tied up there while I do terrible things to you (that you’ll love). No racists, homophobes, libertarians, Reddit atheists, vegans, MRAs, closet cases, starfuckers or people who are rude to wait staff._

(On the other hand, how hilarious would it be to find one of the New York crew on FetLife. Sam considered each of them in turn, discarding Tony and Natasha as too obvious, Steve as too oblivious, and finally deciding it’s always the one you least expect: probably Clint.)

He found himself sitting on the edge of his bed, fully dressed with his wallet in his hands; one last piece of Riley. Sam flipped open the billfold and pulled out the creased half-piece of paper on which they’d hastily handwritten their first contract, thrown together in a motel room one leave in Fayetteville. They’d mostly just been making out, Sam still left breathless by the feeling of Riley’s skin under his hands, when Riley had pulled out a roll of silver duct tape and looked up at Sam through the fringe of his lashes, and Sam felt his heart stop beating in his chest. After that things had moved fast, but not too fast, and by the end of their three-days-and-a-wakeup, Riley had tiny feathery purple-red bruises around his wrists and ankles and a blissed-out expression that Sam couldn’t bring himself to tease him about, mostly because he suspected he might be wearing the same one. There had been a full-length mirror on the wall opposite the motel bed, and Sam would take to his grave the memory of holding Riley upright and naked in his lap, pulsing around him, Riley’s wrists and mouth taped, Sam’s hands lightly around his throat, tears standing in his eyes, commanding _look at yourself, look how beautiful you are like this_.

He hesitated a moment, holding the paper loosely, then crossed the room to open a drawer and place the contract carefully under the photo of them at Nellis. He could keep it without dragging it everywhere; he didn’t need to haul around a piece of writing to know who he was. Sarah would probably say this had to do with improved object permanence but for once Sam didn’t care about the psychological theory. He just knew that after meeting Steve, after finding out he could still want things, still feel things, he no longer needed the physical tangible reminder of his identity.

He pulled on his motorcycle jacket for the ride into Montrose, thinking for the millionth time that in a way, he was lucky his dad hadn’t been around. Having an unbeliever for a son would have been the least of it. Having a flagrantly gay, routinely-risks-life-and-limb son would have probably broken up the damn family; though in the end random urban violence had done a pretty good job of that.

Outside Sam hesitated for a second—if he drove the bike, he couldn’t bring anyone home. He laughed at himself a little and buckled on his helmet. He wasn’t going to bring anyone home.

•

When he got to Numbers, the DJ was playing the Smiths but no one was dancing yet. Jasper was already on stage, though, in his usual silver-studded chaps and leather arm bracers, with some fully-dressed newbie clinging to the big St. Andrew’s cross, and she was yelping with every (extremely careful and utterly non-injurious) crack of the bullwhip. Sam caught a grim expression on Jasper’s face and thought he’d leave that scene to its hasty conclusion.

He wandered over to the main bar, asked the new bartender for a bottle of water, and while she was making change, turned back to case the room. Which is how he caught Sheppard stalking in, radiating aggravation and already trying to pull off the wristband they put on at the door, signifying that you were old enough to drink. His dark hair was, if possible, even more dishevelled, and he wore a white shirt open at the collar and a black jacket, no tie. Despite his height he seemed oddly fragile, not just slender but a little lost or in need of assistance, and Sam found himself taking an extra breath.

Sheppard had paused just inside the door and leaned his cane against the wall, tugging at the wristband with increasing frustration, apparently trying to rip it off with the force of his irritation, which Sam knew couldn’t be done. He left the bar, crossed over to Sheppard and held out his hand.

“Here—let me.” Sheppard hesitated, then extended his hand. Sam slid up the cuff of his shirt enough to see the narrow papery band, and then he pulled his Swiss army knife out of his pocket, flicked it open and cut through the thing. Sheppard’s wrist was startlingly fine-boned, almost delicate, with thick black hair, and Sam could feel his pulse; and something started going off in his head, some kind of shrieking claxon he ignored, as Sheppard stood completely motionless and let him pull off the bracelet.

“Tyvek,” he explained, letting go of Sheppard’s hand and holding the bracelet out to him. “It’s some space-age plastic fiber, you can’t tear it. Unless you’re—” _Steve Rogers_ , he’d almost said.

Sheppard reached back for his cane before accepting the bracelet and stuffing it in one pocket. The white shirt open at the collar did really good things for him. “I don’t go to a lot of clubs.”

Sam tried not to laugh. “That’s kind of…um. Yeah. Sorry. At least tonight we’re _both_ overdressed,” he added randomly, as a pair of girls in leather bras and rubber shorts walked past them.

Sam could have sworn Sheppard had almost smiled, but his eyes remained expressionless.

“Looks like you’re not drinking, then,” Sam observed, when Sheppard said nothing.

“I can’t,” Sheppard began, and then stopped.

Maybe Sheppard was drying out. He wouldn’t be the first vet Sam had met who needed to sober up. (He worried about Tony, sometimes, honestly.) Sam held up his own bottle of water, indicating acceptance. “Hey, I get it, it’s fine.”

Sheppard shook his head like he needed to get the next part out, and said it all in a rush. “No, just—you’re not supposed to drink when you scene.”

Sam felt his eyebrows climb all the way to Chicago. “You’re planning to scene?”

Sheppard shrugged and began making his way past the dance floor. “It’s not a sports bar.”

Sheppard had already leaned over the cash bar to order by the time Sam caught up to him. Sam rested one foot on the railing as Sheppard ordered, zoning out a little, watching Obama on the wall television, where the subtitles said something about ISIS rebranding itself as the Islamic State; he knew they were moving in troops for something big. The other half of his brain was imagining Sheppard stripped to the waist so Jasper could work him over with his masterful two-handed cyclic Florentine flogging style until his back was gleaming with sweat and striped with welts. Sam shook his head a little, took a gulp from his bottle of water. Alternatively: why wasn’t he already negotiating to get Sheppard on the back of his bike so he could take him home and strip him down himself?

Instead he heard himself saying, to his surprise, “First name or last?”

This time Sheppard did quirk a half-smile, leaning back from the bar with his own bottle of water. “Well, I sort of assumed Sam was a _first_ name....” He had a drawl, dammit.

Sam laughed, startled. “Yeah, you’re right. Sam Wilson.” And now would come the puzzled expression, the searching eyes as someone invariably tried to remember where they’d heard that name.

Sheppard didn’t register anything, though. He just stuck out a hand. “Colonel John Sheppard.”

Sam took his hand for the second time that night and felt vaguely woozy, like he’d been putting back shots. “And me a lowly sergeant. Still not saluting.”

“Spare me,” said Sheppard, and there was that drawl again. “Like we don’t both know NCOs who can outwork, outshoot, and outfly any given number of canaries. Off the record, of course.”

He held out his water bottle and Sam tapped his own against it. “Absolutely off the record.” This whole damn thing had better be nowhere _near_ the record.

There was a pause but it wasn’t uncomfortable. They turned without comment away from the television, where some talking head from Defense was explaining the new threat, both stepping back from the bar and facing the stage. Jasper had finished with the yelping woman and now Viola, in a deep plum vinyl dress that almost matched her skin, was leading an uneasy-looking frat boy to the cross. He was wearing pleated khakis and a pink polo shirt.

“That…that can’t be right,” Sheppard said, frowning, and Sam coughed through his water.

“There’s nothing right about it,” he admitted. “But Viola doesn’t really care. She likes vanilla straight white boys and she doesn’t hide it.” He’d seen real submissives trailing around after her, trying to get her attention, only to be heartbroken when she selected some douchebro with a popped collar.

Sheppard narrowed his eyes but said nothing. Sam twisted a little and pointed overhead with his water bottle. “Have you been upstairs? There’s…a smaller cross. It’s quieter.” Suddenly there was too much saliva in his mouth. Since when was he so pushy at Numbers? With a career officer?

Sheppard took a drink, throat working as he swallowed. He looked down at the floor and there was that expression again: a little soft, something painful around the corners of his eyes. Sam studied his face and it wasn’t hard to witness the entire cycle, as watchful blankness shifted through real fear to a flicker of longing and then ended with some kind of angry resolve. Sam was good at faces, good at reading them, attuning to the feelings of submissives the same way he did clients at the VA. And this guy—John Sheppard—he wasn’t in the right place to do this.

Jasper probably wouldn’t have cared; the wiry Latino dude who hung out upstairs, with the thuddy flogger and his inability to keep from wrapping the tips, maybe he wouldn’t have cared either.

Sam suddenly cared. And it was probably a really bad idea, but he wasn’t going to let this guy use kink as another way to hurt himself, or tear himself up over whatever the hell had gone wrong. He leaned toward Sheppard a little more closely and spoke with no sense of what he was about to say.

“If you want, I could demo with you. Just give you a idea of it, what it’s like. Up to you.”

Sheppard finished his water and put the bottle down on the bar before looking directly at Sam.

Green, then. His eyes were green. John didn’t speak, but nodded once, shortly. And Sam felt that old familiar upwelling, the strength of it surging, a siren song: _take, take, take; protect, protect, protect._

•

He walked upstairs behind John, telling himself not to stare. It wasn’t—look, no mortal ass was ever going to compare to Steve’s bounce-a-quarter situation. But Sam had no complaints about what he saw, or the long legs in dark slacks, the way Sheppard’s narrow shoulders moved under his jacket.

In the little alcove, recessed lights shone down a dim cold blue on the black-carpeted floor and walls. A long carpet-covered bench ran along one side, where tired players rested and spectators spectated. Sam needed to learn the name of the Latino guy but he mistrusted him, so he never had. Dude was taking a break and vending, pointing out to a radiant, clearly just-whipped young black woman in white bra and underwear, holding hands with her boyfriend, what toys they might be interested in purchasing for themselves. Sam made eye contact with him and, with a questioning tip of his head, indicated the saltire cross. The guy nodded without breaking his schpiel and Sam turned to Sheppard to say they could either wait for another break a little bit later, or maybe talk about what—

John was already halfway out of his shirt, jacket and cane tossed off to one side, dark chest hair visible.

“Whoa there, just—wait,” Sam said, putting out his palm, not touching him, and Sheppard froze, hands on buttons. Sweet fancy Moses, was he really about to flog a full-bird colonel. Okay, yes, sort of. But. First.

(What was it about this guy, he was middle-aged and ordinary, he shouldn’t be beautiful, but there was something about his mouth, his wrists, the curve of his throat, the dip of it into his chest, the rumpled hair, the—)

“Come here a second,” Sam said. John took an uncertain step forward, then another, like he thought Sam was going to try to kiss him; and Sam made a face, impatient with himself. “No, not like—over here.” He hadn’t even intended to touch him, but there was something blind and anarchic on Sheppard’s face and it reminded Sam of a throttle-jockey about to launch unprepared into a senseless maneuver, hoping instinct and jet propulsion would maybe save him. He put both hands on Sheppard’s shoulders, and just kind of held them there, steady, until he felt him take a breath.

“We go through a checklist, okay? Do a walkaround.” John nodded, lower lip between his teeth, cheeks flushed. Sam’s stomach lurched but he kept his voice low, to cut under the music and chatter. “First, it’s hard to safeword, because of the noise, and you’re facing away from me. So if for whatever reason—and I mean _any_ reason—you need to get my attention, put up your hand. It’s not about tapping out, or trying to gut it out to prove something. Stuff comes up, people take breaks. That’s how it works. Got it?”

Sheppard nodded and Sam tightened his hands briefly on John’s shoulders, and then let go. “Second, it’s not your fault, you don’t know this yet, but I need clear verbal. Yes or no.”

John arched an eyebrow at him and there was that younger, more asshole version of him again, the classless one with the drawl. “Copy that.”

Sam bit back a laugh. Even tormented and miserable, dude could clapback. “Three, and there’s more but we’re keeping it simple: this isn’t impact, this isn’t pain. Not tonight. This is about sensation. See what it feels like giving up a little. Not controlling everything, letting go of it for just a few minutes.” John looked away at this, an involuntary flinch that he checked halfway through, as if to hide it, but Sam saw. He deliberately reached out, touched the side of Sheppard’s face, turned it back toward him. “Just a demo, not a scene. Nothing heavy.”

Sheppard met his eyes then, and there was something so stripped-down and undisguised in his face that Sam was shocked by how badly he suddenly _wanted_. Wanted exactly what he’d just said he wasn’t asking for; wanted to spend hours pulling this man apart into disparate unravelled nerve endings, until John was hoarse and exhausted and couldn’t cling to decorum in protection anymore and just gave it all up, everything, whatever it was, let Sam have it in a drowning wave of surrender.

Sam forgot there were other people there; stopped hearing the music. John stripped off his shirt the rest of the way, let it fall to the floor. His chest was pale, sunburn stopping at his neck. He stepped up to the cross, hands uncertain, and Sam moved forward to show him where he could hold on, behind it. The muscles of his back were long and fluid and down his right side, starting at the base of one shoulder blade and curving low around his ribs, was what Sam guessed was only one of a number of scars. His biceps flexed as he held onto the cross, and Sam already wanted to bite at them.

The vendor was still talking to the young couple but gestured agreeably to Sam with one hand, so he looked down the neat rows of whips, took up a short-handled long-tailed flogger—undyed, the color of wheat—and dropped a couple twenties on the table, because it shouldn’t be used on anyone else. John deserved that, as completely vulnerable as he was right now, hands clenched around the holds, shoulders tense. Sam rolled up his sleeves, undid his top button, and loosened his tie, still watching him. And he kept watching Sheppard for a long moment, testing the flogger slowly in the air in front of him for feel, but mostly studying John’s skin, the way his muscles bunched and shivered, the points of his vertebrae (he was too thin, Sam would have to be even more careful).

The back of John’s neck already looked vigilant somehow, and a little flushed. He was hyperalert; Sam could work with that. It was a matter of being where John didn’t expect, and moving in ways he couldn’t anticipate, and shifting his attention to where Sam wanted it to go.

_Take, take, protect. Protect; take. Give it to me. Let me hold it for you._

 

 


	5. Hit the Silk

 

 

He’d come here tonight on purpose, wanting if not exactly this then something like it; but Sheppard still couldn’t stop shivering. It was infuriating. He clenched his jaw, wrapped his hands more tightly around the grips, pressed the soles of his feet down more firmly into the ground. He was being ridiculous. Teyla routinely delivered more excruciating pain and literal contusions during a half-hour warm-up than what he was about to feel. But this was—it just _was_ different, even though he didn’t want it to be. He couldn’t _see_. Sam was behind him, and he couldn’t see, and he was already fighting panic—

All of the tension was knotted up in his hands and neck and shoulders, so he wasn’t expecting the delicate rush of the whip’s tails where he felt them: in a trickle of warmth along one side, down low, and then the other: cautious, soft as water, like petals unfurling, tracing the back of one thigh, then the other, stroking, exploring. He felt movement in slow circles and cycles, eddying and pulsing against his skin, with the leather swishing through the air and making the crushing, slushy sound of waves. Nothing hurt.

It didn’t hurt. The adrenaline washed out of him so fast he nearly went limp and would have fallen; and now he understood the cross, that it wasn’t just for tying you down but it also held you _up_. It was strange, he could feel Sam _through_ the leather, feel his intention and his thinking and his mood; and with every stroke, he felt a gossamer yet tensile connection to him, something starting to build and complicate and evolve between them, something inquisitive, something he couldn’t yet call trust.

The room had gone quiet; there was no one in it but Sam, and him, and the movement, its light sting now a little faster, a little more pressing, on the meat of his thighs, only to gentle down to a whisper again and drift across his shoulders, the nape of his neck, asking questions to which he didn’t know the answers. As soon as he got used to one pattern it shifted, intensified; stung, bit down harsh like the teeth of a zipper, and then slipped and lapped at his skin, soothing right where it had pinched. His whole body softened and—he couldn’t help it—listened. Became ready to feel whatever needed feeling, in whatever place Sam chose to awaken and talk to and request things of.

He became aware that he’d been holding his breath, and tried to inhale and exhale more regularly, as if he were running; and the mind on the other end of the flogger seemed to sense this, and moved in rhythm with him: now right, now left, now singing across the tops of his shoulders, just barely, now thickening and demanding, sinking fingers into the long muscles of his back, and then shifting again to the tops of his thighs, and his ass. And now staying, and going deeper, and not stopping, and _not stopping_ , and his entire self was suddenly ready for that; that what might have seemed like pain had it come at the beginning wasn’t pain at all, it was something rich and entire and he needed it, his flesh pulled toward it, he arched against the cross but it wasn’t in discomfort or apprehension, it was because Sam’s mind reached out to him with every strike and his body was trying to reach back, wanting to tell him _yes_ , wanting to know that he was still there and he wasn’t leaving, and with hit after hit after hit after hit, stinging moved through throbbing moved through pounding blows that shook through his whole self until he felt like a bell being rung; everything present, everyone accounted for. His mind was utterly empty. He didn’t know if he was making sounds or not. Nothing mattered but Sam, and the movement, and anything it pulled out of him was okay, every one of those reactions was for Sam and he wanted him to have them all.

In this place of undilute blown-open sensation John had no idea of time or decency, he’d given all that over, just waiting to be told if he needed to do anything differently or when he should expect it to stop. Very gradually, as if unwillingly, the shush and hiss of the flogger began to slur; he could feel the points of the tails tingling again rather than existing as an undifferentiated rush of feeling.

He couldn’t have said how he could tell that Sam wasn’t really finished, or that he knew John wasn’t finished either, but he could also tell that that Sam was winding them both down anyway, because of where they were and because of John’s inexperience. He felt the movement lull even more, longer and longer pauses between touches, lingering brushes of its tips against the still-sensitive backs of his thighs and his arms like promises. He was barely able to wonder how the same leather could be both fierce and melting, how it could convey all that; but he know it wasn’t the tool, it was the man wielding it, with generosity and attention and patience, and the realization that someone was doing this _for him_ crashed over him and left something like grief in its wake, something frightening and icy. And it was at that instant the flogger fell away and Sam stepped forward as if asked and held him from behind, just wrapped his free arm firmly around him and held on.

John couldn’t help what his body did; his head tipped back into the curve between Sam’s shoulder and neck, and both hands flew to Sam’s solid forearm and clung there, as the empty feeling melted into a surge of pure gratitude that someone would give him this and expect nothing in return. And that Sam somehow had known this was exactly what John needed, and held him tightly, unashamed, without moving, for a long unending moment, the damp heat of his body seeping through his dress shirt into John’s throbbing skin, the sweaty scent of him something safe and male and good, his lips pressed against John’s temple, not a kiss but an anchor, a sheltered place to rest. John leaned against him, folded, boneless, let Sam take his weight, until something unspoken had passed between them—what, John didn’t know—and then it was okay again, and Sam let him go.

Still reeling, he bent to fumble toward his shirt and jacket; behind him, he could hear voices again, people talking, and then Sam was in front of him, saying, “No, Sheppard—John, stop. I’ve got it,” facing him with a private quiet expression on his face that John hadn’t seen yet. John’s fingers were too nerveless not to let him, so Sam did up the buttons of his shirt and then folded the jacket over John’s arm, smoothing the fabric carefully before reaching up and brushing his fingers through John’s hair. “You’re incredible,” he said, so softly that Sheppard thought he must have imagined that; but Sam threaded his fingers through John’s and started to lead him back downstairs.

People had gathered, apparently; quite a few people. They parted to let them pass through, and behind him John caught murmurs and snatches of praise—“So beautiful,” “Amazing demo, man,” “That was really hot,”—but he stayed focused on the feeling of Sam’s fingers between his, and kept moving.

They were at the cash bar downstairs again and John blinked as Sam put a red Solo cup into his hand. “But I’m not supposed to—”

“It’s pineapple juice, Sheppard. Down in one.” Here was another part of the mystery to try to fathom: somehow the juice was exactly what he wanted and he did drink it nearly in one swallow. When he set the cup down, still catching his breath, Sam was in front of him again, this time holding John’s cane.

“I forgot that?”

“It’s fine,” Sam said, and leaned it against the barstool. He studied John’s face. “How you feeling? You tracking?”

_Jumper One, come in. This is the Daedalus, do you copy, go ahead_. _This is Jumper One with no visual, I’m tumbleweed, over_. John felt the urge to crack up laughing in a way he usually only did horsing around with Ronon. His skin didn’t hurt at all; felt glowing, warm and alive. He raked his hands through his hair, trying to get a grip. It was a lie, it couldn’t be what this felt like; that had to be wrong. 

“Flying,” he blurted out, and Sam’s face was suddenly really serious.

“Yeah. Yeah you are. Okay, give me your phone.”

John managed to fish it out of his pocket and Sam concentrated for a moment, his face lit up by the light from the screen, muttering something about who even still uses a goddamn Blackberry.

He finished, and handed it back.

“Look, that was a lot more than I planned on, and I’m—honestly, I’m not sorry. I just had no idea you would…respond like that. But here’s the deal: I need you to be careful, Sheppard. Driving home especially. Which you’re not going to do until you’ve had more water and I’ve walked you to your car, but then you have to promise me you’ll drive home really slowly, with the window down.”

Sheppard didn’t say anything, just reached again for Sam’s hand. He knew he wasn’t quite himself because he didn’t feel a trace of uncertainty. Sam’s hands were strong and did strong things. He liked these hands and he was willing to do whatever their owner said.

So he let Sam bring him more water, and walk him down Mason Street to his car. And when Sam said that if John was free tomorrow (which he was, he was free every morning), Sam wanted to meet for coffee because they should probably talk about what had just happened, Sheppard agreed and said noon would work for him. And when Sam warned him that he might crash later, he listened, he did, he really listened, and when Sam said so if you can’t sleep or you wake up and you’re not okay, my number’s in your phone and you’re gonna call me, right, or text even if you can’t talk, don’t worry about the time, John promised and said yes he would, he understood, he absolutely promised.

The moon was coming up, half-full; he took the feeder road instead of the freeway, and left the radio on a staticky country classics station, humming even when he didn’t know the song.

And when he got home safely, wrapped in a snug wash of endorphins and glorious numbness, he just had time to pull off his belt and kick off his shoes and fall face-down on the mattress, thinking euphorically that for once he was about to sleep, really sleep, when it came to him in a lacerating flash like an icicle shearing off a rooftop, impaling him from crown to root: _I didn’t think about Rodney even once the entire time_. And then pain seized his whole body in a spasm so totalizing and entire he couldn’t cry out or even breathe, his open mouth pressed wet against the pillow in an infinite gape, unable to move away from it, radiating anguish and just waiting it out dumbly, like a dumb animal.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted two chapters, since they're the same scene and I somehow skipped yesterday. If you're still reading, I still love you.


	6. Buddy Spike

_Coffee, huh? Sounds like somebody met someone,_ Sarah texted back, accusingly, and Sam rolled his eyes at the exposed brickwork of the café walls. It was still too early in the day for this nonsense, only coming up noon. And what the hell _was_ that, some kind of eldritch kid-sister juju? It wasn’t like he was some big player; how did she already know?

He paused, then just went with: _Have not,_ hoping the sibling retort would be enough for now; because he really hadn’t. Like, be real: one admittedly galvanizing and spellbinding demo did not a meet-cute make. But Sarah also wasn’t wrong. Sheppard hadn’t been up there even twenty minutes but time had dilated in that strange slowed-down-molasses way, and there had been vast amounts of space in which to sense his most minute shifts and respond to them with equal precision. Sam hadn’t felt that kind of connection to someone in—maybe ever. It shouldn’t have been possible, but Sheppard’s body had been talking to him, telling him where to move and with what kind of texture and how intensely; and the whole thing had proceeded with the kind of comfortable relational back-and-forth that characterized scenes by couples who’d been playing together for years.

It was a freaky-ass mess and probably really wrong and he wanted to do it again as soon as possible.

The coffee here was Greek, strong black and so thick it came with a little spoon, and a small round butter cookie he couldn’t eat, because what in the what, Sam Wilson was kind of nervous. Despite its killer coffee, Agora was a little too Montrose, what with the brickwork, and the Bon Iver, and the UH kids reading their graphic novels. He hoped Sheppard wouldn’t judge him for it. In addition to the coffee, however, there was also always someplace semi-private to sit. He’d been thinking all summer that if he found someone he wanted to scene with, he’d ask them to meet here.

He took a table in a corner on the first floor, though, rather than the more private ones upstairs, for the sake of John’s injury, and felt glad of this when John stopped abruptly in front of him, face ashen, eyes more grey than green, looking desperately terrible. Sam half-stood up before he could think.

“Sheppard, are you—shit, you didn’t _call_.”

The bottom half of John’s face tried to smile, but his eyes looked past Sam a few thousand yards. He was wearing dark gray BDUs, almost black, and a matching black shirt that looked vaguely like a uniform, except made out of a silky fabric Sam hadn’t ever seen, halfway unzipped at the throat. He hadn’t shaved and his stubble was silvery and rough. Sam took a risk and pulled out his chair for him, figuring he’d ignore it or say something tart, but John sank down into it without comment.

Okay, that wasn’t good. Sam took a breath, trying to figure out the right way to approach this. John was looking anywhere but at him and Sam decided not to get fancy with it. Being direct had always worked with Steve, even at his cagiest. No point coddling someone taller than he was.

He sat down again and leaned back in his chair. “Okay. So you hit the wall and you thought you could handle it by yourself, you didn’t even text me, and now you look like you spent most of the night on the bathroom floor. Did you at least take something? Did you sleep at _all?_ ”

John finally looked up and there were circles beneath his eyes. Didn’t sleep, then. “They gave me Trazodone, but if I take it I can’t move, so that doesn’t really—” He made a negating sound. Sam knew. If you can’t get up when the sirens go off you can’t do your job and you can’t take care of your crew.

“They really will let just any motherfucker be an officer now, won’t they,” said Sam, shaking his head in feigned wonder, and this forced some kind of sound out of Sheppard like a laugh. “You too committed to the dark inner torment of your soul for some coffee, or can I get you a latte?”

This time Sheppard did laugh, even if it sounded like it was scraped from him, and he put his cane in the chair next to him. “Yeah, okay. I’d take a mocha.” He dropped his face into his hands, yawning.

Sam reared back a little in mock surprise. “So it’s true what they say about brass, y’all’s caviar tastes.”

Sheppard almost grinned at this, rubbing at one of his eyes. “Bet I’ve eaten more and worse MREs and bag nasties than you, we can go toe-to-toe on that one.” The shirt’s sleeves were snug around his biceps, and Sam’s heart rate slowed down to a perceptible thunk. He pushed his saucer across at Sheppard, the cookie still perched on its edge, before heading to the barista. “Eat that, you dumb jock. Most of this is just your damn blood sugar.”

He was as pissed at himself as he was at Sheppard, he realized, as he came back, plunked the mocha down on the table in front of him, spoon jangling against the cup, and another saucer with an almond croissant on it. “Here’s how it’s gonna go,” he said, and John’s eyes widened, “I’m asking questions, and _you_ are gonna put _that_ away.”

To his surprise (and secret pleasure), John didn’t even bother nodding, just started ripping off pieces of croissant methodically and chewing them. Sam crossed his arms and didn’t quite glare at him.

“So, you’re new to this,” he began.

Yes, Sheppard was new to kink. Yes, he’d dropped, and hadn’t called. (Sam made a mental note to send a check-up text, next time; the guy had probably gone nonverbal.) No, he hadn’t read much about it online, just enough to make a guess. Yes, he’d gone to Numbers that particular night on purpose. Yes, he was pretty sure he was…that word Sam had just said. (Submissive. Sam didn’t feel like going into fine distinctions right now, though after that demo he had an intuition Sheppard was almost certainly also a masochist, and Sam could already tell, definitely kind of a brat.)

He shifted a little in his seat, eyes not leaving John’s. “Been with a guy before?”

“No, not—no,” he said, a little muted. “But I’m…I’m bi. Probably. I mean, I am. I just.”

Sam took this in without comment. “What about you,” John asked suddenly. Sam grinned.

“Pretty clear I was into dudes in grade school when I made my GI Joes fall in love and get married,” he said, rewarded by Sheppard spluttering around a mouthful of pastry. “So why now?” he asked, since he had him off-guard.

Sam could _see_ him trying to figure it out: not what to say, not how to package it, but the actual truth. 

“I was,” he started, and then stopped. It took him another full minute to work up the nerve again. “I lost someone,” he finally managed. Sam didn’t move a muscle. “It was my fault, I didn’t—I should have known, and…I didn’t do anything. Never said anything, because I didn’t want to mess it up. And I—I realize that doesn’t explain it. There’s just. So much I can’t talk about. What happened.”

Sam nodded. “Classified.”

“Yeah,” said John with evident relief. “Really classified.”

“You weren’t at McMurdo,” Sam said.

“I can’t t—”

“You don’t have to. You didn’t know who I was.” He could see John trying to parse this out.

“Should I…know who you are?”

Sam shrugged. “Was on the news way more than I wanted to be, a couple months ago. That’s how my sister found me. Well, half-sister, here in Houston.”

“Yeah, we didn’t get much news. Or by the time we got it, it usually wasn’t very new.” He pushed away the saucer now covered in crumbs and picked up his mocha.

Sam wasn’t sure how John had missed hearing about three massive helicarriers falling into the Potomac, much less a man flying around them; but that was a conversation for later. “Better?”

John nodded. Sam already liked feeding the guy. This was some next-level nonsense he was getting himself into. He ignored that thought.

“So here’s what I’m going to suggest,” he said, stomach suddenly in his throat, and John squinting at him over the rim of his cup. “That we try this, and I mean _try_ —but we do it totally by the book. Which, going out on a limb here, is not something either of us specializes in. I’ll send you a link to a checklist. We do contract, ground rules, the whole nine. Before any colorful actions. Before we fucking goon up.”

John frowned a little. “No flathatting.”

Sam gave him full-on side-eye. “Oh, there’s _gonna_ be flathatting. You have no _idea_. That’s kind of the point. Just, we both need to be on the same page about it.” He hesitated; the next part was touchy.

“You go to a VA group? Get any kind of counseling?”

John shook his head, lips compressed, mouth mutinous. This worried Sam more than anything.

“Sheppard, on the level. You got stuff buried—not just about whatever mission went south, but stuff about Dad, Mom, hell, the family dog? That shit is gonna surface. And we can deal with some of it as it comes up, but I’m not gonna lie, it can get ugly fast and…how am I gonna say this. You seem like a nice guy, okay, and I don’t want to see you eating dirt. They call it playing for a reason—it’s not supposed to be work. Anyway, not all the time,” he amended, then took a deep breath.

“Couple more things. This’ll probably sound weird but it’s best to just get it out there. So if you have other play partners, scene with other people, that’s fine. I can even give you some names, set you up,” Sam went on. What he didn’t add, because Sheppard already looked spooked, was that if they wound up having sex he’d want to talk about exclusivity. No reason to freak him out even more. Instead he cleared his throat and stuck with, “If we decide to have sex, we can talk about that then.”

John opened his mouth and shut it a few times before coming out with, “Isn’t sex…the whole…?” 

Sam laughed, but there wasn’t any mockery in it. “It doesn’t have to be. Only if we both want that. Just—read through the list I send you, okay? See what you feel interested in. Besides, sex means a lot of different things to different people; it’s worth specifying what _you_ mean.”

They were silent for a minute, Sheppard slouching and fiddling around with his coffee spoon, somehow giving off the impression they were in dining facilities. What was it about the stubble? Sam tried to think if he’d ever been with anyone this much older, before. Steve really didn’t count. Mostly he tried not to look at Sheppard’s mouth, the soft shape of which did things to him. He wondered what Sheppard looked like when he wasn’t strung up tight and wretched; those little glimpses Sam kept getting of someone loose-limbed and sarcastic and probably annoyingly cheerful.

He could also _hear_ him thinking. Sam raised an eyebrow. “Something on your mind?”

“Fraternization,” said Sheppard, after a long hesitation, and the word itself was an entire argument.

Where to even start. Because sure—even without the gay kinky part, John actually had the most to lose, as an officer. Someone in Sam’s position could come after him for harassment and Sheppard wouldn’t just be on leave, he’d be dishonorably discharged.

“I know,” said Sam, who’d already been thinking about it. “But here’s the deal.” He took a deep breath and started ticking things off on his fingers, one by one. “Met in a civilian context. Not in the chain of command. Not in the same squadron—not even in the same _wing.”_ He and Riley had pretty much blown straight past the first three, but at least they were both enlisted. And no one had seemed to care, as long as they kept pulling wounded soldiers and kids out from behind the lines.

He indicated Sheppard with his chin. “Also, not on active duty. And, not going to compromise morale.” If anything, frankly, morale was about to be improved through the fucking roof.

Sheppard said nothing; kept playing with his spoon, apparently accepting this rationale. But there was still something bothering him, Sam could tell. He waited.

“It’s possible—I’m not sure if.” He took a breath. “I might be asexual.”

Sam relaxed; was that it? That couldn’t be it. “What makes you think you might be?”

Sheppard looked out the window, but Sam knew there was nothing out there but parking lot. “I don’t…have a lot of relationships. The ones I’ve had, people get disappointed. They always want more than I seem able to give.”

Sam studied him for a second, stroking his beard absently. “Does sex turn you off completely, make you feel repulsed?”

Sheppard shook his head. “No, I just don’t much...look for it. It’s okay when it happens.”

“So we’ll leave that as a question-mark for now.” Sam thought there could be a couple things going on. He was also describing the way kinky people often felt about vanilla sex. He might just be a really confused bi guys who was secretly into pain. “If you are, that’s totally fine. You wouldn’t be my first ace partner.”

Sheppard shot him an eyebrow, all skepticism. “Doesn’t sound like much fun for you.”

“You’d be surprised. I bring fun wherever I go.”

Sheppard’s mouth twitched, and Sam discovered that he really wanted not just to break him down to little shivering pieces, but also to make him laugh. And to cook him dinner. In his head Sam was making an ingredients list for his amazing tom kha gai when Sheppard spoke again, startling him a little.

“Do I get to ask for stuff,” Sheppard he said, voice low, eyes down.

Sam shook his head, half-amused, half-frustrated. “You _better_. What is it?”

Still not looking at him, in a rush like it was all one word, John said, “Do you think you could kiss me?”

Sam stared at him in disbelief. “Jesus, Shep, you’re breaking my heart here. I’ve wanted to kiss you since you tripped over a beer bottle at my goddamn feet. I’ve wanted to kiss you for the last _hour_.”

John finally looked up at this and Sam couldn’t take his eyes off him. It was mystifying. This ordinary-looking white dude, more than a little beat-up, probably closer to fifty than forty, all unkempt grizzle and likely with so much baggage it was a matched set, and all Sam wanted in the world was to peel off his clothes and hurt him until he was wet-eyed and trembling and had forgotten his words.

“But not here,” he continued, feeling a little wobbly. “Do you like seafood?”

Sheppard looked suspicious. “Is it the kind that comes in foil pouches?”

“Come over for dinner,” Sam said, reaching over to cover Sheppard’s hand with his own, coffee shop filled with college students be damned. “Come to my place this Saturday. Bring whatever you need to stay the night, and tell you what, I’ll kiss all that stupid right out of you,” he promised; and you could have lit an entire airfield by the abrupt gleam in John Sheppard’s eyes.

 

 


	7. Punch Out

Sheppard had made it through about half a metric fifth of Dewar’s before McKay apparently decided he had more things he needed to say. John fumbled the bottle onto to the coffee table, where it landed with a clank, liquor sloshing inside. He wasn’t sure if the booze suppressed McKay, or brought him out—in that respect, this Rodney was very similar to the real one: unpredictable and more than slightly out of anyone’s control. Especially Sheppard’s. Always, out of Sheppard’s.

“I like him,” McKay said, without preamble. John was lying on the couch, which like most couches was slightly too short for him, so he either had to bend his knees, which was agonizing, or hang his feet over the sofa arm. He tended to alternate between the two. Right now he was sort of curled up, face buried in the crook of his arm, although it was stuffy and hard to breathe that way.

“Didn’t ask,” he responded curtly, and flailed around with one hand for the bottle. It wasn’t quite dark outside yet but it was already dim in his apartment and he knew what was coming, and he’d worked very hard to get a head start on being something approaching anaesthetized.

He didn’t even like liquor. The night of the memorial he and Ronon had gotten as drunk as possible on some nasty clear Satedan stuff and even that felt wrong and strange, because John was only used to getting buzzed with Rodney on a couple of watery six-packs. Even drunk he’d never told him how he felt, much less kissed him, or tried to touch him; and now he never would.

“In actual point of fact, Colonel, you can’t _actually_ know that with any certainty,” said Rodney, in his I’m-about-to-science-you-to-death voice. John groaned without lifting his head. “For one thing, you and I ourselves have had literal, empirical evidence of the existence of the multiverse, and firsthand experience of other versions of reality. But that’s not all,” and at this point John could almost see him grabbing at his hair until it stood on end, fluffed-up and crazy, “Greene’s work on the Calabi–Yau _n_ -folds tells us that the six spatial dimensions of string theory can be compactified, leaving the original supersymmetry unbroken, and when fluxes are included—”

“Not in the mood, Rodney,” said John with difficulty, twisting over onto his side and taking another belt from the bottle. “Also Brian Greene is a crank. Isn’t he the one who believes in ESP?” Wait—Brian Cox?

“You’re thinking of Brian Josephson, please keep up,” Rodney corrected, and Sheppard realized with dismay that he was right. Confusing the contributions of key twentieth-century theoretical physicists was, however, probably a good sign that he was well on his way to being sufficiently unconscious. He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling spackle, which had sparkles in it.

“But to return to the topic at hand: while obviously he doesn’t have _my_ level of intelligence, because how many intergalactic genius astrophysicists could there _be_ , this Sam guy is handsome, young, experienced, seems possessed of your particular flavor of irrational derring-do, e.g. Armed Forces hero-complex idiocy, did I mention is rather incredibly handsome, and for inexplicable reasons seems to be attracted to you,” McKay continued, oblivious to the faces John was making.

“And it’s _obvious_ why you’re drinking tonight, you know,” McKay went on, and Sheppard closed his eyes. Fine; he would go to the VA, he would ask his case manager to find him a counselor. He would do it, okay? Anything to get rid of this most insufferable version of Rodney from beyond the grave. “Which is why I think you should call Sam. Wilson, not Carter. Or text him. Since you’re on Earth again and have access to those _powerful new technologies_ , which, patently I’m being sarcastic, nothing really compares to the immediacy and simplicity of the Atlantis comms, and you’re welcome for those by the way, not sure anyone ever really properly thanked me, for the stunning application of binary relations necessary for that technology _alone_ I should have been given my first Nobel—”

Also John’s fault. McKay would have swept Stockholm of every last krona (or euro, or whatever currency they used when you won Nobel Prizes). He wouldn’t have been able to stand up under the weight of all the medals. Another part of Rodney’s life cut short. Another way John had fucked up.

“Besides, if you’re not going to text Sam, you’ll definitely be stuck with me, and I can tell you it’ll be only another two-point-five minutes before they start going off, so please reconsider cancelling or at least postponing your current alcoholic pity-party and getting into contact with an actual real, live, non-dead, corporeal entity who can get you through tonight.” His voice suddenly softened, grew urgent. “For chrissake, John. Let someone help you, because God knows you never let me.”

Sheppard wanted to scream, or maybe throw up. Instead he did what he always did, what he seemed hard-wired from birth to do, and just did what McKay told him. “I hate you,” he said, lurching to his feet and moving to the kitchen, feeling around in the dark for his phone; should be somewhere on the countertop. His fingers closed around it and he heard Rodney laugh, a little bitterly.

“Keep telling yourself that, Sheppard. Clearly you’re wrecked over the death of someone you hated.”

“ _You_ get wrecked,” he muttered nonsensically, scrolling through the five numbers in his contacts list (at least two of them belonging to McKays) and finding “TSgt Sam Wilson” among them. How is he training on T-38s? John wondered again. Have to ask him that sometime. Probably classified.

 _I hate tonight_ , he texted, just as the first firework went off, and he jumped nearly out of his skin, pulse racing, mouth filled with the taste of metal. Instantly it was like he hadn’t had a single drink—all his senses were on high alert and he found himself off the sofa and on his feet again, restlessly pacing, dragging his injured leg alongside him, fists clenching and unclenching. They didn’t have fireworks on Atlantis, so he’d only half-remembered, had mostly forgotten how bad they always were.

 _You’re not kidding_ , Sam responded immediately. Then: _You home alone?_

 _Yes,_ said Sheppard. He thought it best not to mention McKay.

_Can you keep the curtains open? Sometimes it helps to see them. I could have given you some headphones, the carrier deck kind. Cancels out the noise._

John took one tentative look outside, underneath the edge of the blinds, and saw a coruscating green light dripping down like tracer fire. He shuddered and backed away toward the center of the room. All he could think about was finding a weapon.

Nothing. There was nothing in the house, he didn’t even have a sidearm or service handgun. An M11, a 9mm—even his old Beretta. How had he let this happen, he understood not keeping a P-90 in an apartment in Houston but—

The Blackberry buzzed in his hand. He looked down. _OEF?_

He forced himself to type, fingers shaking. _Kandahar._

_Bagram. Well, mostly. Classified._

Sheppard heard himself laugh, to his surprise, a half-bray that sounded rusty. “I told you,” said McKay, sounding pleased with himself. John didn’t bother telling him to fuck off.

Instead he wrote: _Ever get the feeling we have similar security issues?_

A short pause, then Sam: _I can neither confirm nor negate that._

A particularly bad volley went off and Sheppard retreated to the sofa, twitching. After a mouthful of Dewar’s, he picked up the phone again, typed: _Plausible deniability._ It wasn’t easy to spell either of those words, and he had never bothered learning how to use a smartphone, though he knew they had something called autocorrect that people mostly seemed to hate but used anyway.

 _We’ll see about that_ , answered Sam cryptically. Sheppard furrowed his brow trying to figure it out, which almost distracted him from the next-door neighbors joining in with jubilant shrieks and what sounded like—just bottle rockets, he told himself. He tried to remember being a kid and being thrilled by sparklers and poppers and cherry bombs and everything that made light and noise.

It wasn’t only the explosions, either—there was a long slow ominous hiss just as they went off, that especially reminded him of—

 _Fucking RPGs_ , Sam texted, and John stared at the phone.

_How did you know?_

_That sound when they launch. Then the wait._

Sheppard paused a moment, trying to keep his thighs from trembling, pushing down on them with both his hands. Finally he picked the phone back up. _Lost two guys to one in a medevac. Whole helo bought it._

Nothing for a minute, two minutes. He fought not to flinch every time a fresh shriek split the air, or the deep booms that sounded like anti-aircraft. It was only fireworks. It wasn’t actually fire.

_Lost my wingman. Just a regular run, then it wasn’t._

John stared at the words. What do you say back to that? What the fuck do you even _say?_

“Tell him you’re sorry,” McKay said, his voice close to John’s ear.

 _I’m sorry._ Another long pause. (Wingman? Did he mean, another PJ?)

 _I’m sorry for your guys, too_ , Sam texted back, and Sheppard could hear his voice in the words; the warmth, the genuineness. He closed his eyes. Sam’s voice should be illegal in most Southern states, the plush richness of it, and John wondered what it would be like to hear that voice telling him what to do. Beyond just eating breakfast, or clicking on a link. Which reminded him.

After a moment’s confusion, he opened the webpage Sam had sent him. He scrolled down a little, then faster, then even faster, disbelieving, until he finally hit the end. There had to be at least a hundred items on it, and he was supposed to know which of those he wanted to do, didn’t want to do, or was willing to try, as long as he could also stop if he didn’t like them? This was going to take a while.

Another bloodcurdling whistle and John nearly dropped the phone. Fuck this. He clutched it more firmly, grabbed the Scotch, one of the sofa pillows, and headed for his bedroom. He knew when he was whipped.

 _Going back in the closet_ , he texted to Sam, hoping he’d take the joke.

 _Sounds like a plan_ , Sam responded. _Say hi to Tom Cruise._

John was on the verge of making a hair-on-fire reference, but another volley decided him against it. The clatter of reports echoed in his ears, and they weren’t anywhere close to the aerial salutes yet, which were the worst. He shouldered open his closet door and dropped the pillow on the floor; for a brief bewildering instant he almost called Rodney to come in with him, like a dog. But McKay had shut up for the time being and that was fine, he had enough to deal with at the moment.

At least there was no firework equivalent of the sound the gate had made that day. Nor any other equivalent, period. Not like it was ever far from his mind. He heard it in his sleep, he heard it when he woke up, he heard it at random points through the day, he would probably hear it on his deathbed. McKay being McKay, he had no doubt made a recording of the moment, somehow.

“Isn’t this nice,” John said aloud to no one, lying on his back and sticking his legs up the side of the closet wall, crossing them at the ankle. “Comfy. Like a tornado drill.” He remembered those happening at school in Irving, when they lived there when he was a kid, and they’d all leave their classrooms, go to the library and obediently put textbooks over their heads. The high-end treble sounds were more muted in here; mostly now all he felt were the vibrations. He took another mouthful, carefully, raising his head off the pillow and then flopping back down to swallow.

Out of nowhere he had a vivid memory of throwing Rodney off the balcony to test that goddamn personal shield emitter for the first time—what the fuck had they been thinking? He’d shot him in the _leg_ , for chrissake. They’d been children playing with space toys and nothing had seemed quite real. He remembered McKay triumphantly sing-songing “Invulnerable!” to Weir and that’s what they thought they were—Jesus Christ, had he really thrown him off the _balcony?_ Years later they’d reenacted it for Ronon and he’d thought it was the funniest fucking thing he’d ever seen.

You had to be careful with laughter, Sheppard had learned, especially the hysterical uncontrolled kind. Way too often it could turn, on a dime, into crying, some bizarre biological flip of the switch. He drained the last of the Dewar’s, then opened the list Sam had sent him, scrolled to the bottom just to be ornery, and starting clicking the tiny radio buttons with difficulty.

“Wrestling; whips; watersports,” he muttered to himself, clicking _no, yes_ , and _maybe_ (it wasn’t going to do anything for him, but if someone else was really into it, he didn’t want to be a dick about it).

Next was “Unusual semen,” which confused him thoroughly, so he went with _no._ Was there any chance that meant, like, aliens? He really didn’t want to think about Wraith jizz, which, he suddenly had mental images of spawning salmon—definite _no_. Okay. Back to being serious.

But then he got to “Uniforms.” And just as abruptly, the hysterical laughter was back.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darlings, I'm now beginning a few weeks of medical treatments so not sure about updates from here forward. But I will try! Because I love this story, these messed-up dudes, and most of all you for reading.


	8. Mustang

Sam stayed late at the hospital that afternoon, long after the Saturday noon men’s group had ended, because Korean Brian (as opposed to Jewish Brian and gay Brian, and yes, this was how they differentiated themselves) had started having an epic meltdown about something that had happened to him on the university campus the day before, and he would only talk to Sam.

(“It’s the burqas, the burqas,” he’d said over and over, teeth chattering. “I know I’m a racist, I know that, I see the girls just, just _carrying their textbooks_ and talking, but all I can think is what’s underneath, like I know not every goddamn person is Daesh but it was—it was a stairwell, really crowded, okay, and too many exits and there were—in my head I saw _kids_ there, Wilson, little kids, and I don’t know what to do to not fucking freak out everytime I see _normal American college students—_ ”)

By the time Sam had Brian set up for weekly visits with Misbah Kaur, one of their best trauma therapists, and had finished his paperwork and hit the 610, traffic was already what Sarah termed “the tooth-chipper,” more stop than start. He decided on the 225 over the I-45, which added a little more distance but was more scenic; he should still have time to shower before starting dinner.

John had sent him the list early in the morning (god o’clock, implying that once again he hadn’t slept), and Sam had studied it over breakfast a few hours later. Most of it seemed pretty standard, with a few exceptions that caught his attention (John’s openness to edgeplay, including non-consent scenarios, surprised him), and with hard limits that included, in addition to the usual, no humiliation, nothing medical or scientific, nothing pet- or food-related, and (not a surprise) nothing military. Sam figured that meant not being called “sir,” which was fine with him, because it mostly just reminded him of the chain of command in an utterly non-sexy way. (Riley’d always had a trick of using the honorific that was simultaneously breathlessly reverent and also completely sassy, but that was utterly unique to them.)

Other than the non-consensual stuff, Sheppard didn’t seem very interested in role-playing, which worked for Sam; he had an intuition that Sheppard would be more undone by praise than he probably realized, but that was something they could investigate first-hand later.

He sent him back “[A Field Guide to Creepy Dom](http://www.tranarchism.com/2010/12/30/a-field-guide-to-creepy-dom/index.html),” figuring if nothing else, that at least was essential reading for anyone new to D/s, and then spent another quick half-hour going over Sheppard’s list more methodically. He’d enthusiastically greenlit pretty much everything physical: all forms of bondage, impact, pain, and anything sexual, which Sam had his doubts about, seeing as how Sheppard had spent apparently his entire life lurking if not outright cowering behind DADT. But okay. It was a starting place.

And it wasn’t a neutral, clinical starting-place either. Some of Sheppard’s _yes_ selections had Sam’s pulse hammering and his mouth going dry. Since his own primary orientations were around bondage and pain, anything that Sheppard had agreed to along those lines—well. More than once that day, while supposedly nodding along to something a coworker was saying, Sam had caught himself spinning out elaborate scenarios involving precisely those things. John had said yes to face slapping, biting, leaving marks, hair pulling, scratching, every kind of restraint or impact play listed, hot wax, knives (Sam bet there was a story there), gags, blindfolds, hoods, nipple play, orgasm denial, begging, toys, cock rings, ball stretchers, and even marked _maybe_ for CBT. Sam hadn’t done a good third of that, nor was he prepared to; but Sheppard’s feverish willingness was…okay, it was pretty fucking hot. And something to be held carefully, with a lot of thought and awareness.

He pulled up in front of his house, pushed down the kickstand, and left the helmet slung on the back of his bike without putting it under the seat. There were clean sheets and towels in the dryer but he needed to make up the bed, hopefully while not getting lost in fantasies of unmaking it.

 _This is not a big deal, this is just like the demo_ , Sam told himself firmly, flapping out a clean top sheet but not making hospital corners, just leaving it loose. Sheppard probably thought tonight was going to be full-on penetrative craziness, was likely angling for blood and lacerations and ragged bitemarks, and it was up to Sam to hold him back from whatever cliff he wanted to fling himself over, while also making sure at least some of his buttons got pushed really definitively and thoroughly and well.

He thought he could pull that off. Hell, he knew he could. He was good at things, Sam Wilson was, and he knew exactly what those things were. He could fly an exosuit that would have made most people pass out the second they were off the ground, and he could move with it like it was part of him, and exfil injured soldiers and civilians before they ever knew what hit them. He could mysteriously somehow second-guess the insanity that was Steve Rogers, anticipate the next balls-out move he was about to bust out, and be right there the instant Steve needed him to be. He could talk wild-eyed vets down from whatever ceiling they’d glued themselves to, and get them laughing and wiping their faces, sheepish but fundamentally okay, within a half-hour. He was great with kids and dogs, he could dance without looking like an idiot, and he made a peach cobbler so good it brought tears to your eyes. And he could utterly undo a certain kind of beautifully compartmentalized, compromised, tightly-wound guy, the kind who wanted nothing more than to give up his death-grip on self-control but didn’t know how to let go until Sam’s capable hands took it from him.

He surveyed the bedroom. Dim light, dark blue sheets, a heavy smooth black walnut headboard that he’d bought not least because of the strategic gaps between its slats. He had this. Sam went into the kitchen, dug out his largest cast-iron pan, and put on the dinner-making playlist.

•

He wasn’t surprised to see Sheppard in his usual great shape when he arrived: jumpy, on-edge, and at the same time emotionally blunted (that would have been Sarah’s grad-school therapeutic term for it, Sam thought, but it was accurate—everything about him just that little bit muted, like the volume had been turned down). He was gripping a bottle of Italian mineral water in one hand and trying to wrestle a pair of aviators into his shirt pocket with the other, when Sam opened the door.

“That _your_ smoking hole?” he said, nodding at the dusty red Camaro. John scowled, apparently not pleased at having his ride compared to a crash site.

“Hey, the ’78 is a classic—I’ve hung onto that car through more tours than I can count,” he said defensively.

“Huh. Is that because you’ve done a lot of tours, or because you can’t count very high?” Sam offered, and that was it, they both started grinning, and it was all going to be okay.

“Come on in, I’m burning dinner,” he said, and opened the door wide enough for Sheppard to move through with his cane, took the bottle of mineral water from his hand, and left John to his own devices as he went back to throw the vegetables into the pan with the shrimp.

John made it as far as the edge where the foyer tile turned to carpet and then stopped, listening. Sam looked up from sautéeing, asking with his eyes.

“I didn’t expect—”

“A black guy to like Johnny Cash?”

“I didn’t think anyone under _fifty_ liked Johnny Cash,” Sheppard allowed, accepting a glass of water. He was wearing a black t-shirt and dark jeans, and had shaven but still had some five o’clock shadow. His waist was narrow and the t-shirt clung to it just enough.  This time Sam was going to pay a lot more attention to what was underneath that shirt.

“Yeah, well, the Benny Goodman comes next,” said Sam, and was rewarded with Sheppard’s rare husk of laughter. “Reminds me—how old are you, anyway.”

“Forty-three, no, four,” said Sheppard, after a beat. “Just had a birthday.”

“About to turn thirty-six,” Sam said, flipping the contents of the pan over the flame, showing off a little. “But because of Steve—” Oh, fuck. “Just, ah. I got a friend who doesn’t know much about music. So I’m always trying to educate him.”

“And you’re educating him with the sad ballads of JC?”

“Among other things,” said Sam. “Dude had no idea who Marvin Gaye was. Or Miles Davis. Or Radiohead. Or Amy Winehouse. Or Jack White. Or Kanye. I could go on.”

“I get that, though,” John said, leaning back against the countertop in a way that made his slim hips tilt forward distractingly. Sam repressed the urge to hook his fingers through the belt loops of Sheppard’s jeans and proceed with the kissing portion of the evening. Why wasn’t he just going ahead and doing that? This deep instinct he had, to be incredibly deliberate with John. There was a crack, a rift, a bright fault running right through the middle of him; Sam could see it as clearly as he could the points of his ears or the stubborn lift of his chin. At some point, Sheppard was going to break, and he wasn’t going to break clean.

Sam turned off the flame, opened the cabinet, and took out plates. “Because of where I was, um, stationed,” Sheppard said, stumbling over the words a little, “We didn’t have much access to new stuff. It was one of those, read the same book over and over type situations.”

“Classified,” said Sam, looking at John’s mouth and not thinking about much else.

“Really, really classified,” agreed John, licking a drop of mineral water from his lower lip. His hair was its usual disaster, and his arms were slender but somehow his biceps still stretched out the sleeves of his t-shirt. Sam blinked. Okay, he wasn’t sure he was going to make it through dinner. Besides, they’d already talked about and agreed on this one. No reason not to enact it.

“Sheppard,” he said, first checking to be sure nothing was going to fall off the counter or catch on fire, and then turning to him, moving up into his space slowly, putting first one hand, then the other, on either narrow hip, and gently tugging him closer, feeling the heat of his body through his jeans, “remember how I said—”

“Yeah,” said John, his voice rough and suddenly really close to Sam’s ear, as he pushed away from the counter and let Sam’s hands pull him in. “I remember. I can’t—stop thinking about it,” he said, shakily, closing his eyes. He was so slight Sam hadn’t registered that John was _that_ much taller than him, by a good several inches, but when he wrapped his hand around the back of Sheppard’s neck and pulled his mouth down, there wasn’t any doubt about who the fuck was kissing whom.

There was that pliancy, again; wherever Sam’s hands were, John yielded to them and moved wherever he was put, and stayed there until he was moved somewhere else. It was heady and Sam kind of forgot to stop after that first, closed-mouth kiss, letting go of Sheppard’s hips to bring both hands up to either side of his face, licking at his lower lip until John let his mouth fall open on an inhale, then pressing in, feeling the warmth of John’s chest against his and the softness of his mouth. A little helplessly, a little aggressively, Sam slid his tongue inside, pushing for more. John made a small broken sound then, in the back of his throat, and moving for the first time on his own, slid his arms around Sam’s waist and held on, pressing against the muscles of his back, almost clinging. A deep wild space opened up under them and Sam just barely caught the lip of it, knowing he had to reel this back in or it was going to turn into making out and then into other things and there wasn’t going to be any dinner, much less negotiating; and he did _not_ want to skip that part. But for a second longer he let Sheppard have it, holding his head still and just dragging what he wanted from his mouth, tongue-fucking him, kissing him senseless, until finally he let go, mostly for air. Oh, he still had it going on, alright.

“That’s…we’re doing that some more,” he said, surveying Sheppard’s face, which looked satisfactorily stunned, and squeezing his hips once, hard, before letting go.

Dinner happened but Sam didn’t pay that much attention to it, more focused on John’s body language, how he moved and slouched and held his fork, and how his eyes lit up when they talked about flying. Turned out that both of them had been completely out of control as kids; John’s nose was broken (Sam wanted to touch the almost invisible bend in it) because he’d tried to do BMX off a homemade plywood ramp. Sam rolled up his pants leg to show off the crooked silvery burn from his first attempt at a rooftop jet engine (later attempts had involved better fuel sources).

“Holy shit,” John said, impressed, “I don’t want to know how a ten-year-old gets hold of napalm.”

“It’s not hard to make, it’s just any colloidal agent mixed with…you know what, never mind,” said Sam. “The point was, it doesn’t really ignite in any kind of propulsive way.”

“That’s what I found out when I was seven, and stole some TNT from one of my dad’s railyards,” Sheppard said, leaning forward, and Sam kind of fell for him a little, just then, those moments when he forgot himself and became the jackass airman Sam knew was still in there.

“I’m sorry— _railyards_ , plural?”

Sheppard looked only a little abashed. “The family business is, uh, highly diversified.”

“If _diversified_ means _more money than God,_ I’m starting to get that.”

“Look, don’t lose the point of the story here. After I dug a hole and lit the fuse, I told my brother Dave we had to hide behind the garage and wait for the explosion, which of course…never came. I finally looked around the corner, and basically the entire yard was on fire. The Reno FD had to come put it out. They weren’t too thrilled about that. Neither was Dad.”

Sam was appropriately tickled. “Remember to keep _you_ off bomb disposal. Did you think it was like C4, it was just gonna go boom without a detonator? Fire in the hole?”

John opened his mouth and then closed it, as something passed over his face. Sam watched this little drama unfold (right: mysterious painful piece of personal history with plastic explosives, check) before easily changing the subject to his other childhood obsession: racing pigeons.

“Wait, you can _race_ them? I don’t believe you. How fast does a pigeon even go?”

“Fast. Faster than your tits-up Chevy out there, I’ll tell you that much. That thing should be returned to the taxpayers. And actually, now I think about it—aren’t you having a hard time driving stick?”

John sighed, with genuine regret. “Had to swap out the transmission for an automatic. Worth it, though.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m genuinely impressed by your level of commitment to that automobile…truly an opportunity to excel.”

“Fuck you, Wilson.”

Sam let his eyebrow fly up. “So that’s how you think it’s gonna go?” He could tell he’d landed on something by the way Sheppard bit his lip and visibly blushed. He’d done that before, at the club; a tell. Sam smiled at him then, the wide slow deliberate one.

“Guess we’re done with the war stories for now. Go wait on the sofa, I’ll be there in a minute.” If Sheppard had an objection to being told what to do, he didn’t voice it, just pushed his chair back from the table and moved with difficulty into the living room.

(Sam had already been thinking for days now about ways to restrain him around that injury. He cleared the table slowly, still going over different rope configurations in his head, ways to wrap and pin and frame….)

When he flicked off the kitchen light and came around the dining table into the living room, John was sort of curled into the corner of the sofa, good leg half under him, bad one stretched out straight. But he looked better than when he’d arrived: alert, and more relaxed, and not like he was about to bolt for the door, all of which Sam considered good signs.

“So I read through your list,” Sam said, before putting both their water glasses on the coffee table and flopping down opposite him.

John’s expression was determined. “What the hell is _unusual sperm_?”

Sam had just taken a mouthful of mineral water, but swallowed it before it came up through his nose. “Um, I think we can probably forget that one for now. Mostly what I noticed is we’re pretty much on the same frequency, with a couple of exceptions.” (Okay, a few stunners; but one thing at a time.) “So we can either go down the list and talk about each of those now, if you want, or you could just…” _Let me,_ he didn’t say. _Give me the green light. Trust me. Take, take, protect._

John dropped his face into his hands, then looked up again, clearly fighting for composure. “Honestly, how much more talking do we have to do, here, because it’s not really my best thing.”

“Not that much more,” Sam said, because he was personally nearing the end of his ability to not have John’s skin under his hands. “There’s this, though, and I think it’s important.” He slid a piece of paper across the table towards Sheppard. “Consent form. Double-sided. I told you, by the book.”

John shot him an incredulous look and then picked it up, reading swiftly, one end of his mouth twisted down. Sam wasn’t sure if he disapproved or if that was just his paperwork face.

“I don’t have an emergency contact,” was the first thing he said, voice tight. “Not stateside.”

Sam thought about this. Trying to get hold of someone at Really Really Classified wasn’t going to help John in a pinch anyway. “What about next-of-kin?”

John nodded, looking a little less distant. “My brother’s in Virginia. Miraculously still alive after some of the shit we pulled. He grew up a little more…normal.”

“Whatever _normal_ means. So, put him down,” he said, offering John a mechanical pencil out of a cup on the end table. John took it, smiling almost invisibly as he clicked it to bring the lead forward.

“None of this list applies,” he continued slowly, reading down the medical conditions, “except for, um, obviously, _joint or mobility problems_. Left knee, hip. And, uh, broke my wrist in Kandahar, too.” He looked up, face unreadable. “Missing a kidney.”

Sam nodded. “Then mark those down. I’ll be careful until we really talk it through.” He hesitated, then asked anyway. “It’s probably stupid even to ask this, but PTSD?”

Sheppard shrugged, but it looked elaborate, calculated. “Just the usual vet stuff, I guess. I don’t really sleep. Wake easily. Don’t touch me when I do fall asleep, unless you like chokeholds.” He sounded a little apologetic about this last part and Sam wondered who he’d throttled in the past, body awake before mind, and wondered all over again just what kind of action this guy had seen, or if he’d really be okay with being tied down.

He could tell when Sheppard got to the main part, though, because he pressed his mouth into a line and his cheekbones went pink; and again, when Sheppard got to the part where Sam had been pretty sure all along he was going to choke.

“Yeah, no, I can’t do this,” he blurted, and shoved the piece of paper away from him on the table, throwing down the pencil. _The submissive/bottom would like to experience the following things during the scene_.

Sam took a deep breath. “Want to talk about why?”

Sheppard looked at him incredulously, then drawled, “Well, first of all, _I have no fucking idea._ ”

Sam fought not to laugh. “I think you have more of an idea than you’re letting on.” Somehow he was sitting closer to John than he’d been just a second before, and pulled one of John’s hands into his lap, holding it between both of his. “Look, I don’t mind taking point on this one, based on your list. I’m not gonna overwhelm you, I’ll keep it to a few things. So I think we can just about be done talking, as long as you sign off, and promise me something. The most important thing.”

John moved fast when he wanted to, a quick sideways shift and a twist, enough to cup his hands around the back of Sam’s neck, and then he did something strange: leaned his forehead against Sam’s, close and intimate, looking straight at him without guile, long-lashed and flushed. Suddenly they were both breathing harder. Shit, this guy was gonna be a brat. Sam didn’t care. “What’s that?”

He let himself get serious for a second, searching Sheppard’s face to make sure he was reading everything right. “Just—don’t be a zipper-suited sun god here. It’s like in the club: same rules. You need it to stop, you say stop and everything the fuck _stops_. I mean it. And because we’re not agreeing beforehand, I get your verbal consent for everything, this time, before I do it. Every single thing.”

“Don’t we need a word,” John said, not looking away from Sam’s mouth.

“If you want,” said Sam, reaching up to pull down the collar of John’s t-shirt, like John was his to touch, because he was, now, slipping his hand inside to glide along the length of John’s collarbone. There was another scar there, a recent one, ropy against the smoothness of his skin; he brushed the tips of his fingers against the beginning of the wiry hair, watched John’s eyelids flutter shut. His fingers tangled around the chain holding his dog tags and he tugged, a little, experimentally. He wondered why John hadn’t been wearing them at Numbers, watched the adam’s apple of his throat move up and down, promised himself he was going to wrap his hand around it at some point. “But you can also just say _no_ or _stop_ or _ouch_ and that’s pretty much—for tonight we don’t need anything special to—”

“Awesome,” breathed John, and Sam didn’t have time to tease him for being a valley girl before they were kissing again, mouths clinging and pushing, only this time Sam didn’t hold them back, he let them both fall over the edge of it and everything got heated and fraught and complicated, fast. Without really thinking about it he wound Sheppard’s hair in his fist and wrenched his head backward for better access to his mouth, licking into it just for the sheer pleasure of _taking_. John moaned at that, a high startled sound, and his body went rigid, which snapped Sam out of it, and reminded him what he intended to do. He bit Sheppard’s lower lip, once, sharply, then pulled back.

“I can tell you need this,” he said, catching his breath. “And I get that. But you also need to do what I tell you, and you can start to believe me when I tell you I’m going to take care of you.”

John’s eyes were mostly pupil, lips wet, chest heaving, but he nodded, just once, pulling against Sam’s fist at which his eyes got even wider; then he held himself still, clearly waiting to be told what to do next. Sam finally let go of the fistful of hair, reluctantly, and picked up the pencil to sign neatly across the bottom of the contract ( _The dominant/top would like to experience the following during the scene;_ Sheppard had clearly read what he’d written there, and apparently had no objections).

He put the mechanical pencil back in John’s hand before pointing toward the bedroom.

“Sign it, Sheppard. Then in there. Clothes off. All of them. Sit at the foot of the bed.”

Kneeling was out of the question for now, and Sam knew keeping a distinction between the two kinds of pain, injury versus deliberately inflicted, was going to be crucial, in the same way that rope bondage had to be distinct from, could never equal, being in captivity. _Why am I always topping soldiers_ , Sam wondered, before answering his own question. It was all he did, all of his life purpose wrapped into one; the whole damn maroon-beret directive, still, after everything, to this day.

“These things we do,” he whispered under his breath, following John into the bedroom. _Take, protect. Protect, take. Cherish, cherish, cherish._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Treatment is going pretty well, so I plan to keep updating Mondays and Thursdays. Love you!


	9. PFM

Maybe it was because of McKay. Probably a lot of things wrong with him were because of McKay. But John had honestly had it up to here with talking.

His entire pathetic romantic and sexual history had been the subject of endless discussion, usually coupled with either disappointment (“but why don’t we have sex since we got married…aren’t you attracted to me anymore…am I not pretty enough for you…we can’t go on like this, I have needs you know…I mean, do you think you might be gay?”) or sublimated frustration (“yes, yes, Colonel, we’re all very impressed with your manliness, now are you going to _hand_ me the soldering iron or just keep _pointing_ it at me, like it’s a surrogate for something unspeakable and Freudian?”).

And Sheppard wasn’t a talker to start with. He flew things, he blew up things, he ran toward things other people ran away from.

Fuck this. He stopped at the bed and stripped quickly to skin, clothes in a pile on the floor, dog tags on top; eyed it for a second and then moved the stack to a chair, limping back to the foot of the bed just as Sam stood in the open doorway, arms crossed, looking at him, backlit by the light from the living room.

Sam hadn’t said he couldn’t move, but he felt like he shouldn’t. He gripped the edge of the bed with both hands. He hadn’t been told not to talk, either, but he was done fucking talking.

“That’s good,” said Sam quietly, in his voice of wet velvet, and Sheppard felt the muscles in his thighs relax, that he hadn’t realized were tense. Sam crossed over to John and buried his hand in his hair again, not touching him anywhere else; and now John’s shoulders went limp, and he almost sagged, but Sam held onto him by the scalp. What the hell, he couldn’t even hold himself up—

“Don’t fight it, don’t fight me,” said Sam in his ear, and pushed him backward onto the bed, so John went with it, and a fine trembling started in his arms and the muscles of his chest.

Sam pulled his own shirt off over his head and for a dizzying second John couldn’t believe this was happening to him. Sam’s skin was glowing and beautiful and his dark eyes were filled with something wordless and burning, he _wanted_ John, and this didn’t make any sense, this wasn’t the kind of thing he could understand. Sam propped himself up on an elbow, then, looking down at him with total attention and concentration. He traced the shape of the collarbone scar again, and the long jagged ugly one that started below John’s right nipple and curved around his rib cage to the back. He didn’t seem to notice John’s hip and thigh, where the burns and skin grafts were still puckered, angry and obvious. “Were these all from the same fight?” he asked, his voice so low John could barely hear him. John nodded, swallowing. It hadn’t really been much of a fight, more of a total shitshow, but John didn’t think Sam wanted to hear about that just now, so he kept it to himself.

Sam’s fingers curled briefly around his throat, urging him to slide a little higher up the bed; just the suggestion of a real grip, but it was enough to remind John that he was naked and miraculously half-hard and in Sam’s _bed_. He inhaled as Sam let go of his throat and then grazed his hand lower, fingers curled, combing through John’s chest hair, and John had always been kind of embarrassed about how much of it there was, but Sam laughed, a throaty pleased thing, and said, “Hold still, this is for me, not you,” and John forced himself to open his eyes, and let him. He just let him.

Sam touched him everywhere, and John let him; he wasn’t ticklish, and Sam’s hands were strong and insistent and exploring, and did what they wanted, and John let him. Sam dug his nails into the thin skin over John’s hipbones, carefully skirting the burn grafts, and the insides of John’s thighs, and left little red half-moons there, and John had to choke back a whine. Sam leaned closer and bit along the length of his collarbones leaving bright marks, each burning like a small star. He twisted John’s nipples with his fingers, and then bent over to bite at them, his tongue warm and soft and his teeth sharp, and this time John struggled to stay quiet, until Sam said, softly in his ear, “Let me hear you, let it feel good,” and John heard himself making sounds he’d never heard himself make before.

He was vaguely horrified, and flung an arm up to cover his face. Sam pulled it away again, and held his wrist down at his side, then moved to straddle his hips, careful as he swung his leg over John’s injured one, the denim of his jeans rough against John’s crotch. Sam pressed his other wrist down against the mattress, then bent over him again to take one nipple between his teeth, then the other, flashes of fierce pain that went past perfect into some other, darker, more bone-deep place that _hurt_ and was therefore even more perfect, and John’s hips moved abortively underneath him, tender skin scraping against denim, another kind of wincing discomfort, but he couldn’t help it, he wanted that too, he wanted everything Sam would give him, and when Sam held him down it was easier, somehow, it made it okay to move and let out the sounds tangled in his throat.

“Sheppard, look at me,” Sam was saying, and somehow he focused on his face, and nodded. “I want to tie your hands. Just your hands, this time. Is that okay?” and he remembered he had to say it aloud, so he said “Yes,” his voice scratchy, and Sam seemed to like this answer because he kissed him for a long time, one hand pulling John’s hair and the other gripping softly around his throat again like it belonged there.

John didn’t know where the rope had come from but Sam was already winding it carefully around one wrist, then the headboard, then the other wrist, running two fingers around the inside of the cuff he’d just made and twisting, John guessed to make sure it wasn’t tied too tightly. He couldn’t really have formed words beyond _yes_ or _no_ at this point if lives had depended on it, but he sensed tenderness in the way Sam tied him, the caution and the softness of the rope, as well as the tension of it, and that it was done for him, and he felt grateful for it in a way that translated directly into making his cock start to fill and twitch, like it hadn’t in months.

He thought about pulling against the rope, to feel it, but somehow everything had slowed to the speed of cold honey, and he couldn’t move. And now, tied this way, he also couldn’t cover his face, or himself. Sam could see everything.

“Hey, no, it’s okay,” said Sam, taking John’s face in both hands and kissing his eyelids, then the tip of his nose, then his mouth again, deeply and thoroughly. Not knowing what else to do, John just let himself be kissed, but this was all proceeding, he thought, very weirdly, and he wondered when there was going to be more of something, or less gentle, because the memory of that flogging was still surging hot and needy inside him and he wanted, god help him, he wanted Sam to hit him—

He’d said that last part aloud because Sam was laughing, a little. “Oh, Shep, did you really think I was going to get you like this and not hurt you? Do you not know me at all?” And without warning Sam grabbed John and flipped him over, with a strength John somehow hadn’t anticipated, and the ropes holding John’s wrists were now crossed and much more taut, and his shoulders were pulled tight, and he wasn’t quite sure where to put his face, but Sam’s hands were gliding down the skin of his back, passing over his shoulders and his lower back to his ass and the tops of his thighs, brushing for an instant between his legs over his balls and the back of his cock, making him shiver and flinch.

“I want you to look at something, and tell me if it’s a yes or a no,” said Sam eventually, and John twisted his head to one side to see what Sam had pressed against his upper arm: it was a leather strap, or a paddle, about three inches wide. It looked flexible but he could feel the thickness of it on his skin, and the coolness of the dark brown leather, which looked new and polished, and gleamed in the dim light. “ _Fuck_ yes,” he said, his voice a rasp. He heard Sam huff a laugh, and then his hands were warm on John’s shoulders again, easing and rubbing away some of the tension from the ropes.

“Rules of engagement,” said Sam, in that same low voice, kneading John’s lower back, and then at the globes of his ass, and he struggled to reconcile what had basically been a deep-tissue massage, so far, with what was incredibly about to happen and wasn’t going to be nearly as benevolent. “Physically or otherwise, you tell me the second we need to stop. And I’ll do the same—tops get to safeword out too, if we need to leave a scene.” John tried to nod, then remembered: “Yes,” but the word sounded wrong just on its own, so he said it again: “Yes, Sam.” Sam’s hand tightened on his uninjured hip for an instant. “That’s so good. You’re doing good.” John was grateful he was lying facedown; he didn’t know what was on his face but he knew he couldn’t control it and that he didn’t want Sam to see it, not yet. Making noise was bad enough; John didn’t make sounds, ever.

Sam kept stroking down his back, long slow sensual pulls of both hands, and John was lulled by it despite himself, and therefore not ready when Sam abruptly said, voice tight, “Starting now,” and followed it with a resonating crack against John’s ass that made his entire body jolt, and stole his breath completely.

After the initial strike they came in a soft accelerando, warm at first and then faster and harder, and then so fast together until there was almost no pause, John had no chance to catch his breath as the leather flew over his skin, raining down pelting blows that moved around in a flurry of increments, almost as if Sam was using the paddle the same way he had the flogger, circling and brushing past his skin rather than striking down and staying in one place. He heard Sam behind him, exhalations coming in short, hard puffs, and sensed the sheer physical effort this was taking, and felt that same wordless wash of gratitude he had felt in the club, that someone was doing this _for him_ , and he didn’t understand what Sam was getting out of it, all this work and no endorphins, that John was the one feeling all the pleasure.

The leather slid off his body at the end of each blow and came down each time in a slightly different spot and just when he’d dealt with the feeling of that slap it had already shifted and come down elsewhere, and it wasn’t like he’d thought it would be, less of a feeling of being paddled and more of a feeling of just being beaten, worked over like a speed bag. They weren’t discrete, weren’t identifiable as individual blows, they were rain, they were hail, they were a white-hot flood of sensation and the minutes went by, and became some kind of time not measured in units, and it went on and on until he stopped trying to control his response to it, it was impossible to guess where the next stripe of pain would fall and he just gave up and went slack and then rigid over and over, let himself flinch from each slap, let his body twist and rise and jerk, wrapped his fists around the ropes holding up his arms, let them hold his weight and he thought he was saying something but it didn’t matter what, he just let Sam take whatever he wanted from his spasming flesh.

And it was right at that instant it happened again, and this time he felt it: his mind plunged from its usual place to somewhere deeper and yet brighter, ears filled with a loud humming sound, where there was nothing to fight against and nothing to defend. It was an almost empty place except for the hot feeling of the pain, and he thought it was probably okay for him to stay here where it was simpler, where he didn’t have to say or do anything, just exist. There was a pause, and he wondered if it were already over, but Sam had only switched hands and the torrent of pain happened all over again only from another angle. John dimly thought he might be about to come but couldn’t really tell, just that his hips moved helpless against the sheets with each slam of the leather, and he concentrated on trying not to beg, mostly because he didn’t even know what he wanted to ask for.

Then the blows slowed, and slowed more, until they pattered out like the end of a drum solo and finally ceased, with the cool flat of the leather still caressing him though John could hardly feel it as an individual sensation, everything was just undifferentiated fire; and then Sam’s strong fingers were laced around his throat again, and he became aware that he was sucking in air desperately, and Sam’s touch settled him, he cleared his throat and tried to drag in air less frantically, more deliberately.

“That’s right,” said Sam, quietly, “Just breathe.” And John felt his heart rate drop perceptibly as Sam started raking slowly through his hair with the other hand.

He zoned out again, then, but after a long time he was—somehow turned over again onto his back and curled up, arms still tied, but now mostly in Sam’s lap, and Sam kissing his face over and over, brushing back his sweaty hair, smoothing through the tangles and telling him how good he was, how well he’d done, how perfect, how beautiful, how good. Everything hurt. John felt amazing.

Sam untied him without dislodging John from his lap, which seemed talented and wonderful to John, and then he was holding a bottle of water to John’s mouth so he drank from it, coughing a little when he swallowed, and Sam was wiping his face so apparently he _had_ been crying, but that was okay, just this once he knew it was okay because Sam said it was. Sam pulled the sheet up over both of them, him with his jeans still on, and held John against his chest in a way he thought no one had ever held him before, or maybe he had never let them, arms around his shoulders, protecting him, Sam’s chin pressed against the top of his head, murmuring nothing; and then just when John thought he’d gotten through the worst of it and was safely out the other side, all he did was think: _goddammit, Rodney_. And there was that dense wave of anguish again, he was in completely over his head and drowning, and he turned his face into Sam’s chest and sobbed. And Sam, like some kind of idiot angel, just held him, wrapped his arms more tightly around him. “Yeah, I thought so. I thought so, beautiful. It’s okay, you’re going to be okay. I’m here and I’m not letting go. You’re okay.”

“Fuck this,” John choked out, before a fresh surge of it pulled him under. It was like being gutshot, or stabbed; it was so entire he couldn’t see anything, just held onto Sam like it could save him and, during one bad moment, he couldn’t help it, pressed his face against Sam’s skin and opened his mouth to shout but couldn’t even make a sound, raw with grief, and Sam held him tightly and just let him, just fucking let him.

“I know. You’re doing it, you’re doing okay. It’s almost over,” and John wasn’t sure how Sam knew that but he seemed to know so many other things about John, about his body and about how it worked, that he believed him, and held on, and just let the pain beat him from the inside like a drum.

And like with other kinds of pain, there was a pause, just an opening, enough for him to drag in an inhalation before it descended again in a clench; and then another, a little longer this time; and another. Gradually John became aware of Sam’s lips on his forehead, his voice—he was singing? Or talking. His chest vibrated, and John held on, and tried to stop. It was better now. It was a little better. He started to be able to hear things. “There you go, you’re okay. Stay with me. In—good. Out—again.” He was in Sam’s arms, and he did what he was told. Rodney was dead, and he didn’t know how to keep living. But he was alive. He was alive and he was right here. He was still here. “Good, that’s good. There you go. So good.”

Something soft against his face—a t-shirt. Sam held it to his nose and said, “Blow,” and John laughed, a tremulous bleak thing, and did. Sam wiped his face again and threw the t-shirt over the side of the bed. “You’re amazing, you did so well.” John tightened his arms around him, though Sam was clearly insane, and couldn’t let go for anything.

But after a while someone was shaking him in the dark. “Shep, wake up. You need—here, take these.” Three oval pills in his hand. “You’re going to have a motherfucker of a headache, not to mention your ass got beat into next week, so just take them.” He swallowed them dry, was handed water, drank it. “Okay, one more thing—slide the fuck over, you’re taking up the whole bed.” He tried to laugh again but couldn’t, just went where the hands pushed him, wound up on his stomach with one foot hanging off the edge and was unconscious almost before he’d finished moving, just barely aware of Sam’s hand, pulling the sheet up over him and drawing soothing circles on one shoulder, until he dropped off, and slept like he hadn’t remembered sleeping in months.

  

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alas, I've been more or less splendidly ill the last couple of weeks thanks to treatment side effects, so apologies for slowed-down posting. But now feeling better and hoping to resume weekly schedule once more! If you're reading, you're a legitimate actual angel and I love you for it.


	10. Army Proof

Sam woke early, because the goddamn Air Force never lets up, went to take a piss, and then stood in the kitchen yawning for a second, thinking indeterminately about coffee and watching the sky go different shades of orange and fuchsia, before deciding _fuck it_ and heading back to bed.

He snagged his phone from the coffee table on the way.

 _Hey_ , Sam texted, after shooting a glance at Sheppard, who was still totally racked out. He lay sprawled on his stomach, cheek pressed slack into the pillow, dark hair going fifty different directions, one wiry naked shoulder pale and vulnerable against the sheets. _Trouble Man._

Sam doubled the pillow up behind his head, moving carefully; pulled the sheet up around his waist. At some point in the night he’d been smart enough to shed his jeans, so was down to boxer briefs. He only had to wait maybe a minute before Steve texted back. _Got your six. What’s happening?_

“‘What’s happening?’” he mouthed, rolling his eyes. _Oh my fucking god where do I start_.

There was a pause. _Language, Sam._

Sam glared at the phone. _So I met someone. He’s funny, and good-looking, and I already like him._ ( _Goddammit_ , he thought. He really did.)

The little bubble with dots in it rose and fell several times. Finally: _Is that the problem?_

Sam bit his lip. Yeah, it was. _Not exactly_.

_So you like him, but?_

_He’s military. Kind of messed up. A lot messed up. Maybe Bucky levels of messed up._

More bubble with dots. _Brainwashed, or just, what do you call it. Traumatized?_

Sam thought for a second. _Probably just trauma._ (Jesus—“just trauma.”) _Won’t talk, says it’s classified. Flew in Afghanistan but I don’t think that’s it._

_If anyone can handle that, Sam, you know it’s you._

_You’d think so, wouldn’t you,_ Sam thought, but didn’t text. Then Steve again:

_Do you want me to try to talk to him?_

Wow. That was a thought Sam hadn’t had. He considered this, lowkey taking another look at Sheppard, who was still completely unconscious, not even twitching or appearing to breathe. Sam studied the way one hand was folded up beneath him, probably having fallen asleep. For the first time Sam could see the gray mixed into his hair, there on the nape where it was cropped shorter.

_If I can’t get him to talk to me, or someone else. Yeah, maybe._

He hesitated before typing the next part. _Everyone there okay? You and Bucky?_

Steve sent back the hearteyes emoji. Disgusting. How was Natasha even friends with this loser.

 _Happy for you, Gramps._ A pause. _Seriously, everything cool?_

_Hate to break your heart, but we’re fine. Go flying. Hold hands with your pilot. Just let me know if I can help._

Sam sighed, relieved. He really didn’t want to go back to Stark Tower anytime soon, though he knew he’d probably have to at some point, because wherever Steve was, disturbing kinds of trouble tended to follow, the kind Sam tended to be good at helping with. _You too. If anything comes up._

He waited for it. Sure enough: _On your left._

_Go to hell, Rogers._

Sam caught his weekend 8 a.m. alarm just before it went off, slid the volume all the way down, and twisted to put his phone on the nightstand. When he turned back around, one eye was watching him.

“Okay, Sheppard, you know that’s creepy, right.”

Half-a-smile, slow, blinking. Then that drawl: “Maybe I’m a creepy guy.”

“You sound like you ate a Brillo pad. Drink this.” Sam handed him the last of the water.

Sheppard pushed up on one elbow to down it, then winced, apparently just realizing the extent of his damage. Sam let himself be a little smug as he took the bottle back.

“Yeah, you’re gonna be sore.” He lifted the sheet to double-check: no broken skin, which he knew. But John’s ass and the backs of his thighs were beautiful, purple and blue and already yellowing. Sam wanted to touch them, go over every bruise, but didn’t know how long John could stay, didn’t want to start something they couldn’t finish. Although if he was being honest, the whole thing was starting to turn into something he wasn’t sure he could finish anytime soon. He liked the look of those marks. He liked that he’d put them there, that they were _his_. He liked the thought of making more.

He lowered the sheet, reluctantly. “I can get you something to put on those.”

“I, it’s…no, it’s fine,” said John, stammering a little. That pink flush high on his cheekbones. Damn, white folks were pitiful. “I like it.”

Sam hadn’t expected Sheppard to be able to admit that. “That’s really hot, and also, no. Be right back.”

He returned from his bathroom with a tube of hydrocortisone 2.5 and another of aloe gel. It’d be nice if they came mixed together, but oddly enough the pharmaceutical industry seemed uninterested in compounding salve for the kink community. He lifted up the sheet and didn’t make a big deal out of smoothing on a thin layer of hydrocortisone, then a thicker one of the gel, ignoring John’s hissing intake of breath and rubbing it in carefully but thoroughly.

Sam wiped his hands on a corner of the sheet, then draped it over Sheppard more loosely and lay back down again on the other side of the bed. “Go back to sleep. It’s Sunday.”

John stretched, carefully, then smiled at him, and it was so simple and unexpected it made something in Sam’s chest turn over. “No, I’m awake. Don’t you have brunch with your sister?”

“Usually, but it’s a drill weekend,” Sam said, unable to stop himself from running a hand through Sheppard’s hair. John groaned and closed his eyes, and when Sam tried to move away, Sheppard’s own hand flashed up and caught his. “No. Don’t stop. Not allowed.”

“Knew you were gonna be bratty,” muttered Sam, but he left his hand where it was, raking out the tangles gently, massaging John’s neck with his thumb.

John’s eyes were still closed. “So I. Acted like a fucking freak last night.”

“Freak in the sheets, you mean?” said Sam, all innocence. “That say that’s a good thing.”

“You know what I mean.”

Sam sighed. Okay, they were doing this, and he hadn’t even had breakfast yet. He reclaimed his hand and scrubbed at his own face, stroking his moustache back into place. “Yeah, so. Don’t act too surprised—you had that coming, Sheppard. Whatever it is, you’ve been shoving it down in there for what, three, four months now? Whenever you went on leave from Really Really Classified.”

Both eyes regarded him now, alert, cloudy gray-green. John’s mouth was set, and Sam was starting to be familiar with what that particular expression meant. “I still can’t tell you. About what happened.”

“Don’t take this too personally, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened.”

Sheppard barked a laugh that was so full of pain, Sam almost hated himself for what he’d just said.

“Well, that much I can tell you: he _was_ a genius. Best mind on our project. More than that—he was the project.”

Sam twisted onto his side and propped himself on one elbow, watching John’s face. If he was actually talking, Sam was listening.

“Shit, you’re—how am I in bed with someone like you,” John said, moving to touch Sam’s chest. Sam shook his head.

“Don’t get distracted.” He tried to think of a question he could ask, that wasn’t going to invoke the very secret secret status of whatever secret secret bullshit John had been up to. “How long?”

“What?” said Sheppard, still preoccupied.

Sam closed his hand over John’s and pulled it away from his chest. “How long was this project? I’m guessing not just a tour or two.”

John shook his head, hair falling into his face. “Ten years. Coming up on ten years exactly. I mean—it’s still, it still is. Just, I’m not there.”

“Because of what happened?”

“Pretty much. I tried to stay and keep going. I did try. It didn’t work.”

“Because, let me guess,” said Sam, brushing back John’s hair again, wondering when was the last time he’d had it cut, “Your coping skills mainly involved alcohol and stone-cold denial.”

“That and getting into fist fights with subordinates,” Sheppard admitted. He rolled over on his back, which must have hurt, and looked up at the ceiling fan. “Sometimes breaking stuff. Your condo is nicer than mine.”

More distraction. Sam felt a flash of something not quite like anger, but close. Frustration maybe. “At the risk of sounding like an asswipe, people die on missions, Sheppard. You can’t do shit about it.”

“No,” said John, and his voice was so small and hurt Sam wanted to spank him and cradle him all over again. “I’ve lost people before. This wasn’t…he was a civilian, Sam. And it was my job to—he was _my job_.”

“I get that. And, we can’t always be perfect at our jobs.”

John shook his head, and then his mouth was on Sam’s so fast he didn’t have time to react, just opened, startled, and let him in. Sheppard was a good kisser, not too fastidious about it, not too sloppy. His tongue slid against Sam’s, licked along the roof of his mouth and ignited a soft fire at the base of his spine. He gave in and pulled Sheppard on top of him, their legs tangling, bare skin against skin. Closed his eyes, let himself grind up against him a few times. Fuck, this guy was good at not having feelings.

“I just—want to not think about it, anymore,” John gasped, as Sam’s fingernails finally found the bruises and scraped delicately at the skin there, long slow strokes up from his thighs to his lower back, making John shiver and hide his face against Sam’s shoulder.

“And I can help with that, up to a point,” Sam said, breathing on his neck and then biting down just below his ear. “But it won’t go away. And it won’t stop coming back until you deal with it.”

“I kind of I thought did that, last night.”

“Not how it works, Shep. You gotta log your hours.”

John’s voice went cold. “What do you know about it.”

“My boyfriend died,” said Sam flatly, lips barely moving against the skin of Sheppard’s neck, and he felt rather than saw John go still. “I already told you. But Riley wasn’t just my wingman. Went down and I couldn’t do anything but watch. Like a horror movie, only it was real and we were in it.”

John didn’t move. Then: “An RPG.”

Sam drew a breath, went on. “Like I said. Normal night extraction. Then out of fucking nowhere. Nothing anyone could have done.”

“You were dropped?”

Sam mouthed John’s neck where he’d just bitten it, thinking. “Not exactly.”

John rolled off him to one side. “Classified?”

“So classified. The _most_ classified.”

They lay there on their backs for a beat, not looking at each other.

“This is bullshit,” said John, at last.

“Yeah, and the worst part is, we’re not even eating pancakes for this conversation.”

John looked at him again, and the hazel eyes definitely had more light in them, today, and Sam did kind of wonder if last night had shifted something for him, maybe. Maybe. Or maybe now that the scab was off, the wound was about to start bleeding for real this time.

Sheppard lowered his voice suggestively. “I know a place that makes chicken and red velvet waffles.”

“You do not,” said Sam, marveling.

“I do.”

“What the frickin’ piss, airman? Why are you not driving me there right now, in your piece of shit Camaro?”

“Because I can’t sit down,” Sheppard complained, and Sam gave him true, official, unadulterated side-eye, flexing his fingers in exaggerated preparation.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you asking me to stop last night—you really gonna bitch about this now?”

John opened his mouth to argue and Sam pounced. “Oh, it is _on.”_

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're still reading this? I can't believe you're still reading this! You're amazing and I love you.


	11. Football Bat

 

> _From: John Sheppard <jumper1@atlantis.sgc.gov>_   
>  _To: Radek Zelenka <zelenkaradecek@atlantis.sgc.gov>_   
>  _Date: 7 July 2014, 12:03:47 CST_   
>  _Subject: Re: John, this is enough._
> 
> _Hi Radek. Sorry I didn’t write before. Like you guessed I wasn’t doing too great for a while._

John stopped, took another gulp of coffee. Thanks to McKay always thieving it, he was now used to drinking his boiling hot, about the only way to get it down before it was stolen straight from his cup. He guessed he could let it cool a little now, maybe even add cream. What a world to live in.

He started a sentence, then backspaced. Come on, it was just Zelenka. He could do this.

> _PT is going pretty well, tell Ronon he’ll have to work to keep up with me._

That was a lie on like four fronts at once. Forget running—at this point, John just hoped someday he’d be able to walk without the cane. Or, hell, even walk _with_ the cane.

(And Sam hadn’t even _touched_ his leg. John knew what the scars looked like, the original ones as well as those from the graft surgery, and was glad Sam hadn’t examined them. Just positioned John carefully so he wouldn’t be in any pain, anyway not the injury kind, and then gone to fucking town on him. John shifted in his chair, still feeling the welts from Saturday night, letting it take his breath away a little.)

> _Thanks for the pictures and news. I’m glad the ZP3Ms are working out._

He paused again, looked at the tiny Blackberry keyboard. Was this the part where he was supposed to say something about when he would be back? How the hell was he going back? Being away from Atlantis was like having part of his body gone, a cavernous hollow empty space hanging out inside of him where important internal organs used to be. But Atlantis without Rodney couldn’t exist.

The truth was that of all the people to be dead, Rodney McKay, PhD, PhD, seemed the most unlikely. He was the least dead person John had ever met. He was alive enough for several dozen people, all stealing John’s coffee and taking the last cookie and kvetching about their hypoglycaemia and their food allergies and their misunderstood brilliance and the terrible loneliness of their tormented genius minds.

He wasn’t surprised Rodney was still yelling in his brain, months post-mortem. Actually he was more surprised Rodney hadn’t yet found some way to rematerialize and chew them all out for having a funeral without him, and probably saying all the wrong stuff in praise of his intellect.

See, this is why John never answered email. He didn’t know what else to say.

It was okay. It was _Zelenka_ , for chrissake. He didn’t have to get fancy with it.

> _Take care of each other. Will write more soon—JS_

He hit _send_ , listened for the pinging sound, then tossed away the PDA. Enough already, for one day.

John thought, standing up to stretch, that maybe he should be freaking out more, or, more accurately, at all; but he just…wasn’t. Not about the gay part, or the other part either. Sam made everything seem normal. Or maybe after all John had just finally gotten used to out-of-control, unpredictable experiences, after approximately ten years spent visiting assorted planets in another galaxy and having shit go sideways usually within minutes of stepping through the gate.

He decided swimming trunks were long enough to hide most of what bruising was left, and the water would feel good on his skin, so he changed fast and then stood at his front door, looking outside through the spyhole to make sure no one else was at the apartment complex pool, which he could barely see if he craned his head just right. It seemed deserted, which made sense for a Monday morning.

He still wasn’t used to being able to look _through_ the door ; the Ancients apparently hadn’t thought about maybe not wanting to run into people, and it was one of John’s least favorite things about his quarters, that when the door opened he had no idea who was there, it could be anyone waiting to waylay him about anything—though it was almost always McKay, which was fine. He’d gotten over any desire for privacy from Rodney pretty much in the first year, when it became clear that his sleep schedule and, frankly, all of his waking hours as well, were all entirely at Rodney’s mercy, should the chief science officer have an idea in the middle of the night or at any other time.

Shepherd had never been much of a pool swimmer; the water was inevitably over-chlorinated and stung his nose, but he rarely stayed in very long anyway, just enough just stretch out his tense muscles, wash away the night sweat, and clear his head a little from the dreams.

This morning’s had been somehow worse than usual. He was in an F-302, coming back from a mission with McKay, everything fine, only this time when he turned around to ask Rodney a question, _he wasn’t there_ , and John started flying in frantic circles, looking all around the clock face trying to figure out where the hell he’d gone to. He radioed desperately for backup, for someone to check his blind spots, and when he checked the GIB seat again in sheer disbelief, this time Keller was back there, pale and splattered in blood, saying _what did you do to him, where did you put him_. _I don’t know, I don’t know what happened_ , John kept repeating in bewilderment, as he lost control of the stick and started spiralling, and woke with both hands clenched into fists, croaking _I don’t know_ into the empty bedroom.

Sheppard finally decided the coast was clear and walked without incident around to the pool, kicked off his flip-flops inside the iron gate, and slid into the water using the metal ladder, lowering his leg carefully, rather than diving, which was fine, because the water was surprisingly cold for July.

He eased into the water up to his neck and did a measured breaststroke from one end to the other, turning slowly when he reached the end, using his arms to push off from the side. There was a dead palmetto bug floating belly-up in the middle of the pool and he cupped his hands under it and flung it off into the shrubbery; even treading water for that two-second interval was exhausting.

He twisted around again, did another lap. Sam had been surprised John hadn’t known who he was. John gripped the tile at the shallow end and stood up for a second; flung his head back, scattering water. McKay always made fun of him for it, but it was true—he wasn’t the best at Google-stalking, and “Sam Wilson” wasn’t a very good name for it anyway. Maybe if combined with his rank? He pushed off from the end, switching to a slow flutter kick.

Once, early on, he had made some dumbass comment about seeing two Athosian guys together, a comment that had Teyla smiling the special bright angry smile she only used when she was clearly trying really hard not to punch you so that she could educate you instead. John had gotten to know that expression well, but at the time he thought she was being very polite and charming. _Of course, colonel,_ she had said, _I am sure you do not mean to imply it is unacceptable for adults to be in a relationship of their own choosing?_ John had said something vacant in reply, only sort of getting it, but this was in those first uneasy days, when he was still vaguely trying to uphold the UC, and also way before they all knew about Ronon’s three moms.

Since then, John had seen nearly every permutation of adult partnership it was possible to see; Pegasus inhabitants didn’t seem to care who you made it with, as long as there were babies involved at some point, and he had come around to that point of view pretty quickly himself.

Still, it was probably a big step for him to go from tolerance to guarded curiosity to feeling that way himself about another guy and not trying to hide it. Rodney always noticed who was interested in John, no matter what their gender, and didn’t hesitate to make elaborate sarcastic comments about it; since most of the time John hadn’t noticed himself, it was actually kind of handy to let McKay be his portable gaydar, even as he spluttered about John getting all the space babes (an outraged complaint he continued to make even after he himself was married and getting some on the regular).

John reached the end of the pool, and instead of making the usual messy turn, let himself float on his back and drift into the middle of the water, staring up at a milky gray sky. He’d thought it would be a lot sunnier here, where there were palm trees and giant flying insects, but it had turned out to be overcast more than not, and rained more days than he expected. It made him miss the mainland, where an afternoon summer monsoon might hit hard on midday but had always blown over by sunset, leaving waves tall and translucent like the Pacific, light shining through them like clear green glass.

He sighed, flipped over again, and went back to the flutter kick.

Okay, so he liked the way Sam looked. Big deal. It didn’t mean he had to marry the guy. He thought about asking if they could fool around more. He thought he could handle it; they had already kissed, and if John had stood that without freaking out—the sudden memory of it made something curl hot and throttled inside him—then he could probably handle more touching. And definitely more hitting.

He thought about how he had never been great at doing the underwater flip at the end of the pool, but didn’t really care, because he wasn’t swimming for speed and anyway this way he didn’t have to snort water out of his nose. How he preferred swimming in the ocean even though breakers knocked you in the face, and seaweed got in your board shorts, and your rash guard rode up and left you with skin pebbled by gravel. The shaky marvel of staggering out of the surf, everything bright and wonderful, feet digging into wet sand.

How he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to surf again, or how he would cope with that. How with perfect pearling clarity he remembered afternoons on the mainland, balancing Torren on a boogie board, showing him how to hold his arms and where to put his feet, then later handing a sandy, wriggling kid back to Teyla—the casual, easy way their foreheads touched, her eyes creased with sun, face relaxed—and something in his chest squeezed tightly then, so he stopped thinking about that.

How in the middle of being spanked, he’d actually gotten it up. How that was astonishing and unexpected and also nice. How Sam hadn’t said anything about it, and that helped.

How Sam had kissed him, and held him and how that suddenly felt scary (he swam harder, put a little more shoulder into it, grimacing), a lot scarier than the rest of it, because he could become a junkie for that, that feeling of being sweat-drenched and high on endorphins and letting Sam pull him in, letting himself wrap his arms around Sam’s bare chest and just breathe there, skin to skin.

John stuck his face under the water, to clear his head, and made it maybe three more laps before Rodney started in on him.

“So, you liked that,” McKay said brightly, out of nowhere. John was proud of himself; he didn’t even flinch, just kept methodically stroking through the water, movements steady, face held carefully still.

“I’ll be honest: I’m surprised,” Rodney went on blithely, as John switched to a slow crawl and focused more or less grimly on the tiled depth markings on either side of the pool. Four and a half feet; five feet. Five and a half feet. Six feet. “Especially given the fact that, owing to my superior powers of observation and deduction, I rather assumed I already knew everything there was to know about you, not that you’ve ever exactly been an open book, Colonel Strong Silent Type, but—”

Okay, that was just—“Rodney, I’m not strong _or_ silent. Jesus, it’s like you never heard of Han Solo.”

John could _hear_ him putting his head to one side, mouth twisted up thoughtfully. “Good point. You’re far more rakish-hypercompetent-daredevil-who-deflects-everything-with-sarcasm.”

“No, Han was a hot mess,” John parried, using a phrase he’d learned from Chuck. “ _Leia_ was the competent sarcastic one.” _Because you were—_ he stopped himself from finishing the thought, which presumably Rodney would hear anyway, and spun at the deep end of the pool, going back to breaststroke, already tired. “Besides, so what. So, I liked it. Whatever.” He tried not to let himself think about the fact that he was talking out loud, to himself, while swimming, because that was—

“Ah, but that’s just it,” Rodney said, pouncing. “You _admitting_ that you _liked_ something. Something that isn’t on ESPN. Anyway I assume bondage isn’t on ESPN? It’s certainly not a _Canadian_ sport—”

“Is there a point to this?” John interrupted, feeling the sudden need to be elsewhere. The sky stayed overcast, and the low gray clouds made him feel chilled despite moving through the water.

“Only that you should let yourself have this,” Rodney said, after a beat. “Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not _afraid_ ,” John said automatically, as he hauled himself out of the pool dripping. He sluiced most of the water out of his hair with one hand and headed through the iron gate back to his apartment, limping more without the cane but suddenly bent on getting away.

“Oh, obviously,” snapped Rodney, “Forgive _me_ for noticing _anything_ out of the ordinary, of course after one night you’re _completely comfortable_ with the fact that the smell of his skin already makes you feel _safe_ , and—”

John slammed the door to his apartment and stood there panting, wet and barefooted on the tile, having forgotten his flip-flops by the pool, as usual, because he didn’t ever wear them on the mainland. He stood there for a long time, confused, key still in his hand, not sure why the door-slamming had worked, only grateful that it had, and thinking again of that moment when Sam had pulled him close against his bare chest, trying to work out why it was both primally reassuring and also, fine, terrifying, and goddammit was any of this ever going to make any sense.

He shook himself out of it, crossed over to the sofa and looked blankly down at his phone to check the time, dripping down onto the cushions. Better start driving to therapy. But for another long moment he was still pinned in place.

Afterward, it had only been a little awkward, not nearly as bad as he’d thought it might be.

He’d dropped Sam off back at his place after the promised chicken and waffles, which they’d mostly wolfed down in silence, with some discussion of whether the cream cheese maple syrup was overkill (John) or vitally necessary (Sam), and a brief but intense discussion about Jason Collins joining the Brooklyn Nets, and Michael Sam being with the Missouri Tigers, and the relative importance of both these events, which John hadn’t actually known about but was interested to learn. And then, in Sam’s driveway, there’d finally been a vaguely stilted morning-after moment, which to be honest he had expected earlier, so he wasn’t too surprised by it when it finally showed up.

The noon light had beaten down on them as Sam had stood leaning in the driver’s-side window of the Camaro, clearly wanting to ask him something but maybe not sure of the right way to ask it. To be honest the whole situation was so FUBAR that John didn’t think there was a right way to ask anything. Or anyway no perfect way. John fiddled with his keychain and squinted out the windshield.

“Sgt. Wilson,” he’d finally said, looking at him over the tops of his aviators, “Not to put too fine a point on it, but I would appreciate it if you could see your way clear to a repeat performance. I mean, not exactly. But more or less.”

Sam gave him the joyful smile, then, the sexy gap-toothed one. “Already way ahead of you there.”

John had regrets. He’d been so, so _floored_ by the whole thing he hadn’t really been able to reciprocate much. That didn’t seem fair. He shook his head. “I feel like I, um, kind of owe you one. Or several.”

Sam was still looking pleased with himself. “Beautiful, you don’t owe me a thing. You were perfect. But if you’re not busy on Tuesday night, you can find me right here.”

Sheppard squinted harder. “Not at Numbers?”

“Nothing against that fine establishment, but I’d rather have you all to myself.”

John felt a shiver go down the back of his neck. The backs of his thighs were screaming against the hot vinyl of the car seat and he didn’t care. “That…that works for me.”

“Cool,” said Sam, and hit his fist once on top of the car. “Door opens at 8 pm. No cover charge.”

John had driven away with a genuinely stupid grin on his face, and turned up the radio as far as it would go. At least for that moment, and for the rest of the afternoon, Rodney had had nothing to say.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was for mysterious reasons a beast to edit and I've been stuck on it for days. I'm indebted to starskin for color-coding the flashbacks and to betts for helping me iron out the rhythms. And to you who are still reading. <3


	12. Grape

Sarah wasn’t impressed when she heard about Sheppard; but then not much impressed her. Sam figured he’d have to be going out with, like, Daniel Craig to get her to sign off on it. Maybe Idris Elba.

“We’re not _dating_ , okay, not really. We only had dinner once. Just seeing each other.”

Sarah tilted her chin down and looked up at him through her eyebrows, legs crossed at the ankle, one sandal swinging off the end of her foot. “ _Seeing_. Mm-hm. Is that what they call it these days.”

Sam was about to respond when he got hit in the back of the head by a little pastel foam airplane. He snagged it from the floor, then glided it again toward Peri, over the back of the wicker loveseat. She caught it this time and started doing a victory dance, a surprisingly complicated one for a six-year-old. It had a lot of hip movement and looked vaguely familiar.

Sarah sighed. “When it’s not airplanes it’s old MTV videos. She’s into Janet right now. Mostly _Rhythm Nation_.”

Sam let out a low whistle. “Girl’s got taste. Those are not easy.”

His niece finished busting her move and half-crawled over the back of the loveseat, sneakered feet kicking in the air, shoving the plane insistently at Sam. “Do it again, Uncle Sam, again!”

“Periwinkle, what did I say about the _uncle_ word,” Sam reminded her, taking the plane and straightening out a bend in the wings.

“It makes you think of the government?” Peri struggled a little with the word.

( _Uncle Sam_. Jesus, if _that_ wasn’t the perfect sidekick name.)

“Right in one. Now go back for a long pass,” and he extended his arm all the way, gliding the plane to her as she tripped backward, grabbing in the air for it, and Sarah yawned.

“She’ll literally do that all day if you let her.”

Sam thought for a second. “Peri, do you wanna _be_ the airplane?”

“You mean fly like you?”

“Sort of. You can always say _put me down_ if you don’t like it.”

“Oh _now_ you’ve done it,” said Sarah, who nonetheless couldn’t help laughing as Sam picked Peri up and tossed her a couple of times in the air just for fun. He then proceeded to fly her daughter up and down the length of the screened-in porch, arms securely around her middle, making various whooshing and thwapping noises, not entirely sure what airplane he was even trying to be (a helicopter?). Peri gasped in delight, grabbing at Sam’s hands with her own but not stopping him, only clutching at him while shrieking, “Faster! Go faster!”

“You got an airman on your hands, sis,” said Sam finally, catching his own breath as Peri ran out into the back yard and immediately flopped down on her back in the grass, dizzy. Joey was out there already, waging strategically complicated war games in the dirt with various figurines, and he left them to wander over and stare down at her, puzzled by his sister.

“God I hope not,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “Remind me why I wanted you down here?”

“Free child care on weekends, I think.”

“Which you won’t able to deliver if you’re busy with this white boy.”

Sam winced. “He’s…not a boy, exactly. Little older than I am.”

Sarah stared at him. Sam could see the picture she was forming in her mind, and it wasn’t a flattering one. “Wow. So you’re taking up with some sad old drunk veteran? After boning _Captain America?”_

“It’s not like that,” he said automatically, in his best talking-to-journalists voice, even-toned and reasonable. “Steve’s just a good friend.”

Sarah remained unimpressed and frankly Sam couldn’t blame her, that hadn’t exactly been his best effort. “If you say so.”

“I do. And Sheppard’s not…” He couldn’t think what part of that to deny. Sad? A vet? White? Alcoholic? He tried again. “You might like him. Not bad to look at, got a weird sense of humor. Despite being broody and…sort of a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

“Like that’s what you need in your life. You _do_ like to mess shit up, don’t you.”

“And you wouldn’t know a thing about it,” Sam shot back, which netted him a pillow thrown at his head.

Sarah smoothed her maxi skirt down over her calves, bracelets clinking. “Look, my life is _good_ now, okay. I _like_ being single. I only go on an OKCupid date once every six months just to remind myself why I don’t do it. Last guy turned out to be Ted Cruz’s childhood best friend.”

“Wow, that’s— _girl_. What are the odds?”

She pushed back her hair, making a face before reaching again for her spritzer. “Houston’s a small town, I guess. At least he paid for sushi. But I’m _over_ sad white men, so don’t wind me up. Have fun with yours.”

Sam had a vivid flashback to Saturday night, one that brought a wave of involuntary heat to his face; yeah, they were having fun, alright. But it did make him think: what did this mean to Sheppard, right now? He was in an unbelievably busted-up, broke-down place, and Sam was pretty sure it wasn’t just fun, to him. Maybe they needed to have that conversation about sex and exclusivity sooner rather than later. He felt in his pocket for his phone, wondered how rude it would be to use it.

Sarah gave him full-on sister-face over the top of her drink. “Jesus, just text him. Ask him to brunch next weekend. We’ll go to Baby Barnaby’s.”

“Not the Breakfast Klub?”

“He worth standing in line for?” It was always wrapped around the block, most weekends, by those craving the best soul food in the Third.

“Ate his way through his chicken and waffles and part of mine, on Sunday.”

Sarah _hmp’d_ , but her face softened. Sometimes she was so pretty Sam couldn’t quite figure out how they were related, but there was a lot of strength in her face, too, and he also couldn’t imagine what it had been like for her: growing up without a dad, raising kids without one, and still getting up every day to grind like she was three women rather than one. He wished she didn’t have to be so strong. Wished there were better straight dudes on OKCupid, and fewer Tea Partiers.

“Was the Ted Cruz guy at least good-looking?” he asked, as he gave in and dug out his phone.

She took a swallow of her wine and shuddered dramatically. “God, no. Looked like an octopus in a car salesman suit. Maybe you can explain it—I don’t understand the way men age. I get the hair loss, and the belly, I guess; but why the clothes? Like can they _try_? It’s like they don’t even _try_. And I’m out here _trying_ , you know what I’m saying. I go to the gym, I eat my baby kale.”

Sam flashed back again to his up-close view of Sheppard’s flat stomach, tensing as Sam flipped him—

“Yeah, no idea. Hang on a sec,” he said, looking for their last text.

It was from Sheppard to him, a couple hours ago: _Sorry again I freaked_. Sam hadn’t had a chance to respond yet, as he’d been pushing around queasy astronaut candidates on the flight line all day, in between his morning run and a glorious late-afternoon test of Tony and Shuri’s latest EXO iteration. His shoulders were still sore and his cheekbones felt windburnt.

He hesitated, then typed: _Told you, we’re good_. Wondered how to stop Sheppard’s embarrassment from coming up again; thought for a second about Bucky. _Look, you didn’t try to hurt me, or yourself. So it’s really okay. Still think you should talk to someone, though._

Then, since it was almost five and he’d had a drink and all bets were off: _Just curious…how do you feel about handcuffs?_

He’d expected a longer pause; Sheppard wrote back immediately, _Better than zip ties, I guess._

Sam frowned. Shit—had John been a POW, was that part of his deal? He should have pressed, should have asked more questions about bondage styles. Well, he could damn well ask them now.

“I’m just gonna—” he gestured with his phone at Sarah and she waved him off, already engrossed in her Kindle. Sam closed the screen door behind him and sat on the back step. The kids were way down under the trees “watering” them with the garden hose, mostly drenching each other.

 _Sounds like you’ve spent time tied up in not-so-fun ways,_ he started. A minute; two minutes.

_You wouldn’t believe me if I told you._

_Try me_.

Sam leaned back on the step, feeling the heat of the concrete soak into him, figuring he was about to get chased off with “classified.” Instead, to his surprise, Sheppard wrote back two full sentences.

_We met pretty often with the locals. Locals weren’t always friendly._

Where the fuck had this guy served, the eighteenth century? That was it; he was talking to Tony. He needed intel, not to indulge his curiosity but to make sure there wasn’t some fresh HYDRA-shaped hell they didn’t know about just waiting to pounce when they least suspected it.

He and John also hadn’t talked about why Sam had been plastered all over the news in April. What a Charlie Foxtrot. On top of all the usual negotiating, to have to deal with…whatever _this_ was.

 _SERE?_ he asked.

_Hell yeah, how do you think I survived the locals._

So John wasn’t just a pilot, but had classified-level training in survival and evasion, resistance and escape. Which made sense, given his rank. And yet here he was, letting Sam—okay. Deep breaths. He hadn’t made Sheppard do anything he hadn’t been into. Been really, really into. This was fine.

Sam wrote back, feigning calm. _No reason for us to recreate the greatest hits, then. But you seem okay with rope?_

 _It’s fine._ A beat. _Actually better than fine._

A pause, then Sheppard seemed to have abandoned punctuation ( _finally_ , Sam thought, pleased).

 _somehow I can tell it’s not_  
_that you’re not_  
_it’s hard to describe_

He waited to see if Sheppard would try to describe it anyway, then threw him an easy one. _Not doing it to you, but doing it for you?_

_yeah exactly_

Then, to Sam’s surprise:

 _it’s holding me_  
_keeping me there for you_

Sam closed his eyes and swallowed. Every time he thought he could run a circle around Sheppard, he turned around to find him there. Whatever else the guy was, he was also way nervier than he liked to let on. Smarter, too. Must have been a strange career trajectory. Sam decided to take another risk.

_Leather cuffs?_

Another pause.

_I think okay_  
_but through the rope I can feel you_  
_it’s_  
_wait_

_be right back_

Sam wasn’t sure he’d ever seen someone type it out before, instead of abbreviating it. John often didn’t know how to do certain things, obvious things; they stood out like small but bright flags. On top of a _ten-year_ deployment; and Sam had thought _his_ service record was eccentric. Honestly, the only thing he could think at this point was space travel; something to do with Thor, maybe. He didn’t know much about that particular big guy but after the Incident it was pretty clear other universes were involved, and since Sheppard obviously hadn’t been doing milkruns over Somalia—

Natasha would know. Or Tony. Nothing could be _that_ classified.

But then at some point, didn’t that mean he was going to have to broach the subject of how exactly he’d come to be Captain America’s part-time sidekick? Sam dropped his face into his hands, feeling sweaty and a little woozy. These were the kinds of things you didn’t think about, when Steve Rogers showed up at your door, scuffed and dirty, and asked if he and his hot Russian assassin friend could hide out in your house. Sometimes it was hard to think, around Steve.

•

He didn’t guess either he or Steve had thought it through, or even been thinking at all, at the time.

They’d stepped out briefly into a fire-safety stairwell at Stark Tower, maybe a couple days after Steve had gotten out of the hospital and Natasha had given them the intel, taking a hasty break from one of the endless Avenger team meetings about how to quote neutralize unquote Bucky. Since Steve’s role at these meetings seemed mostly to be repeatedly losing his temper and raising his voice at Tony, Sam had dragged him out the second they’d adjourned for lunch. Steve was chafing to leave, to get started, and Sam didn’t blame him. Frankly, if it had been Riley, he wouldn’t have waited for permission or equipment or tactical super-support, just set his alarm for the middle of the night and fucking left.

Which is precisely what he suggested to Steve in the stairwell, grabbing his forearm and pulling him down to sit next to Sam on the narrow steps, their hips and thighs brushing together. Steve was wearing khaki pants which would have looked hopelessly nerdy on anyone else, and a close-fitting dark green button-up. Sam didn’t let go of his arm. “Come on, man—you really need the whole A-team to be in on this thing? Can’t you just bankroll it yourself? You must’ve had a savings account in the forties with like, I don’t know, a whole dollar in it. Gotta be worth something by now.”

Steve looked down, sheepish. He still had a piece of tape on his cheek, holding together a cut, but he looked better than when he’d woken up in the hospital by a factor of many. He’d been too pale then, almost yellow-green, but now he was back to his usual Rogers all-American color scheme: flushed cheeks, blue eyes, dazzling smile.

“I made some money from the war bonds thing. Went to Bucky’s sister when I died, though. And Tony keeps trying to put me on the payroll, but I can’t see my way clear to—”

He shook his head at himself, rueful, and a strand of blonde hair flopped down, almost into his eyes. Sam had more or less gotten used to just ignoring shit like that. Sometimes it was like Steve’s main superpower was being pretty.

“To hell with it. Let’s just go, Rogers. Fly standby to Minsk tonight, stay in a damn youth hostel if we have to—just long enough to shake off the jet lag, throw together some gear and start tracking. We’re losing time here. Yeah?”

Steve finally met his eyes and nodded, the beginnings of a look on his face Sam maybe hadn’t seen before, his expression usually clouded and grave even when he was smiling. But this was like some kind of hope was glimmering for him, and it made him look lighter, and impossibly young. Sometimes it was easy to forget he was barely even thirty, still just a kid.

Sam found himself looking at Steve’s lower lip; reminded himself not to be getting any ideas.

Then time did that thing it sometimes does, where everything got slow enough so that when Sam hauled his eyes back up to Steve’s, it was just in time to see _him_ look down at _Sam’s_ mouth. Which was clearly the reasoning behind his next brilliant decision, which was to hook his fingers mindlessly into the collar of Steve’s dress shirt and pull him closer. Steve’s breath was cool across his face and he seemed to be having a hard time keeping his eyes open, because they kept fluttering shut.

“Is this okay?” Sam tried, before Steve leaned against him and kissed him full on the mouth.

Steve’s lips were as lush and petal-soft as he’d known they would be, and Sam didn’t hesitate, this wasn’t the moment to get coy or weird about things, he just swayed toward him and kissed back, hard. And when they pulled away from each other for air, Steve looked very much like he’d prefer not to be stopping and maybe crawling into Sam’s lap instead.

Sam blinked, tried to take stock of where they were, what was going on. Steve’s lips had parted without hesitation, letting Sam inside, and he tasted like watermelon, because Tony had brought in a fruit tray with the coffee, and none of this made any sense; but Steve still had one hand cupped around the back of Sam’s head and the other hand grabbing the iron railing of the stairs, apparently to get leverage so he could kiss Sam better, which he had been doing really, really well.

“Holy shit,” said Sam, dazed, and then they kissed some more, and Steve was biting just under his jaw and nearly _was_ in his lap by the time they heard a door clang shut, overhead somewhere, and jerked apart, startled and, in Sam’s case at least, impossibly turned on.

He stood up and backed away, trying to pull himself together. Steve made a brief inarticulate sound but let go; sat sprawled on the stairs looking up at him, both of them winded.

“I don’t—really don’t like what I’m about to say, but that was probably a bad idea,” Sam admitted, between gulps of air, which was a completely terrible thing to have to say because it hadn’t felt like a bad idea, at all. But this thing with Bucky. And—just, Bucky.

Steve clearly wanted to argue, but knew the same thing. He was too smart not to get it. They stared at each other for a long moment, breath slowing down, before Steve finally laughed, the bitter sad one, and dropped his head into his hands.

Sam immediately moved forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t mean it like that, man.”

“I know you didn’t,” said Steve, not looking up. “Just…you have no idea how bad my luck is.”

Sam thought he might have some idea. “It’s not only about Peggy Carter, for you. I know that much.”

The bitter laugh again, short and a little jagged, like it took something out of his chest along with it. “No, it’s not. Although, don’t get me wrong, that’s bad enough. But I don’t know how to do this, Sam. What if I can’t—what if he can’t come back from this. What if he never—”

Sam tightened his fingers on Steve’s shoulder. “Don’t start thinking that way. We’re gonna try, okay.”

The thing was, even when you were working your hardest to be good around Rogers, to be your best self, he was always _better_ ; not because he was trying, but because somehow he just couldn’t be anyone besides who he was. And whatever had had a hand in making him be that person—brave, generous, painfully honest, impossibly compassionate—Sam knew it had included Bucky. Now Steve had glimpsed the mouth-watering possibility of having back a part of his life that he’d thought was gone forever, that he probably woke up every day missing and went to bed still missing, feeling the incessant desolation of it being lost, gone, but still hurting, aching like a phantom limb.

Sam had pretty much felt the exact same way when he gave Steve and Nat the EXO-7 briefing folder, and Steve picked up that picture of him and Riley—like he’d innocently reopened the laceration and Sam was bleeding out all over the floor. But then it had happened: Sam had wound up in the mix with them, getting his wings back, actually being _useful._ He could still fly without Riley; he could still live—not just a small, carefully selected, rationed-out and bounded existence, but the whole deal.

Steve’s hand came up and covered his, pressing down gratefully, saying all the things Steve couldn’t say. Mostly _I’m sorry_ , and _I still really like you_ , and but also _thank you for getting it_.

If Steve’s luck had always been shitty, Sam owed it to him to try to make it better for once.

He pulled away, slowly; stuck his hands in his pockets just to put them somewhere.

“So. We good?”

Steve looked up at him, that glimmer of hope back again. “Yeah. We’re good.”

Sam nodded. “Let’s go find homeboy.”

•

Sam sat still for a second on the back steps, keeping half an eye on the kids and half on his phone; but whatever had interrupted Sheppard, he didn’t return to the conversation. After several minutes, Sam went back inside and made Sarah a fresh spritzer, then himself one too. Go hard or go home.

She flicked an eyebrow at him and he settled back down on the loveseat, wicker creaking under him. “So? It a date?”

Crap, he’d completely forgotten. Sam shook his head. “So you remember the, ah, the Incident?” It was a rhetorical question; Sarah’s unit had been sent there in the weeks following to help deal with clean-up (and Sam had been there himself, doing social work stuff for Médecins Sans Frontières).

She laughed then, head thrown back, and it was clearly at him, not just near him. “Samuel Wilson, you did not somehow find _another one of those assholes_ all the way down here.”

He could feel the chagrin visible on his face. “Are you gonna keep laughing at me if I say, _maybe?”_

“Yes, yes I am.”

“Alright then.” _Prepare to laugh,_ he thought, dismayed, _like, probably, a whole lot._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darlings, thank you for your patience. This summer has just been so weird. Anyway I flew home yesterday and am trying to get back into something like a routine, so I'm hoping to finish posting all of this in July and August (since that's when it's taking place—well, July 2014).
> 
> Special shout-out to my longtime beta Betts who is just about the best human I know, and also makes me work harder and do better; she is a bright star in my sky. ExpatGirl has also been helping me, hugely, a couple of times with very short notice. Who would we even be without our betas? I love them, and love you too.
> 
> (PS if you like Sam/Steve and you're not reading [astolat's fic](https://archiveofourown.org/series/97604), do yourself A BIG FAVOR and START)


	13. Bent

Sheppard had jumped when his name was called, nearly dropping the phone. He just had time to type hastily “ _be right back_ ” before the bored-looking tech in purple scrubs said “Follow me,” and John limped after her down the ugly tile hallway to have vitals taken and sign whatever release forms he needed to sign, leaving Sam in mid-sentence.

Back in the waiting room, he was reaching for his pocket to explain to Sam where he was when he heard his name again. This time a middle-aged woman in a lab coat stood smiling at him warmly. “I’m Dr. Kaur, it’s nice to meet you,” and John managed to shake her hand without dropping his cane. “Please come on back, Colonel,” she said, and this time they went the other way down the hallway.

Her office was dimly lit by an assortment of incandescent floor lamps, the glaring fluorescents turned off completely, and John felt his shoulders relax despite himself. “Nice lighting,” he said, selecting the plumpest-looking chair, and settling down into it carefully, still feeling every inch of the skin on the backs of his thighs. But he had zero intention of bringing up his suddenly kinky sex life on day one, or ever at all, if he could possibly help it.

“I hate the overheads here,” Kaur said conspiratorially, pulling out her rolling desk chair and sitting down. “They make my head hurt after half-an-hour, and I have to be here all day, so.”

_Atlantis_ , John realized. The soft lights reminded him of Atlantis; and instantly he felt hunched and miserable again. It was one of those things you didn’t think about until you were stuck here, how the lighting on earth was all wrong. He caught himself tensing his bad leg, and forced himself to let go.

Dr. Kaur didn’t say much, other than giving him some more paperwork on a clipboard and noting that their first session was, unfortunately, going to be mostly questions and forms. Filling out humiliating checklists was starting to be a bigger part of John’s life than he preferred, but he squared off and set to it. When he got to the end of the questionnaire, he laughed out loud.

“Most pilots don’t find queep that funny,” said Kaur a little dryly, and he started liking her.

“Yeah, I’m no exception. It’s just that I realized, uh, the guy on here—” he gestured to the clipboard “—seems really fucking depressed.”

Dr. Kaur reached for the clipboard and stuck her glasses on her nose, presumably the better to see that John had circled almost exclusively threes on something labeled “Beck Depression Inventory.” _I feel the future is hopeless and that things cannot improve. I feel I am a complete failure most of the time. I feel guilty all of the time._

She turned to the last page, where nothing had been circled for the last question, because Sheppard honestly had no idea which one was correct:

_0 I have not noticed any recent change in my interest in sex._  
_1 I am less interested in sex than I used to be._  
_2 I have almost no interest in sex._  
_3 I have lost interest in sex completely._

Why wasn’t there a negative three, for _I have suddenly become extremely interested in sex for maybe the first time in my life_? That wasn’t an option. He thought she would hand it back to him to finish, but she just looked up at him with the kind of clinical curiosity he was used to seeing on Carson’s face. “Well, at least not _everything_ is terrible,” she said mildly, and John almost laughed again.

Kaur turned out to be alarmingly easy to talk to, and fortunately reminded him nothing of Heightmeyer. She’d graduated from Uniformed Services, had worked at the Academy for most of her career, and though she was using her medical title, John figured out from his casually discreet study of her desk, walls, and bulletin board that she was a major. For her part, she somehow asked him questions cleverly enough to get answers for almost twenty minutes, before inevitably fetching up with a clang against the steely wall of “classified.”

They sat there for a minute in silence, not uncomfortably, but he felt bad. He should have thought this through. Why hadn’t IOA provided him with a therapist? Stupid question. Like they cared. He couldn't even find a doctor on base, because there really wasn't a base, just Johnson, so he'd had to turn up at the VA like a veteran. Which he guessed he was, or about to be.

Kaur wrote something in the margins of his paperwork, then took off her glasses and looked at him again. She reminded him a little bit of Weir, but not in a bad way. Just, she wasn’t going to let herself be stopped by unforeseen complications. That kind of person.

“It actually doesn’t matter where you were deployed, Colonel, or what the mission was,” she said, head to one side. “What matters is what happened to you. There was an accident.” She nodded toward his cane. “Someone you cared about died. And you feel that it was your responsibility. The details aren’t as important as you might think. It could have happened in Kabul or it could have happened in your living room.” It had practically _been_ John’s living room, was the thing.

He couldn’t say anything. Kaur waited for him like they had nothing but time.

“He was a _civilian_ ,” he got out eventually, starting with the last thing he’d been able to say to Sam. “And it was my—it should have been me. I was always first through the—” _gate,_ fuck, he couldn’t say _gate_.

“This time, you weren’t the first through. There must have been a reason for that.”

Sheppard could feel a trickle of sweat run down the hollow of his back. Everything in the VA was insanely air-conditioned; he couldn’t possibly be hot.

“Not a good reason. Not good enough.” His throat closed up. They were only supposed to be running tests, just tests. It wasn’t even a mission, they weren’t going anywhere, McKay and Zelenka had just been messing with the ZP2M because they needed to calibrate something and—

They sat there again for a while. She had a sweater on the back of her chair, a bowl of dark chocolate squares on her desk, and a framed photograph of an enormously overweight gray tabby cat above it. Sheppard exhaled, and indicated the picture with his head.

“What’s your cat’s name?”

Kaur smiled. “Eloise. Do you like cats, Colonel?”

“No. Well, I don’t _not_ like them.” He exhaled again, carefully. “The, uh, the civilian guy, he had one. Gave it away, to join the mission.”

Another silence. “It was strange, because he was allergic to everything. _Everything_. But not cats, apparently; so we used to tease him. Just, I always blew him off about the allergies, thought he was being a drama queen. But then I saw it happen. We—we were—” _on an away team_ , he couldn’t say.

It was the most he’d said about Rodney in months. He raked a hand through his hair, swallowed.

“We were having dinner with some locals and someone, there was citrus in something they gave us, a drink. And he, my friend, he—” _stopped breathing_ , why the hell had he started talking about this in the first place. It was strange, Sheppard had always assumed people in anaphylaxis would turn red, or their faces would swell up dramatically, but for whatever reason Rodney had coughed exactly once, turned white as a sheet, and then gone down in complete silence, clutching at Sheppard’s arm. And John’s heart had turned to ice water in his chest as he fell to his knees next to him, frantically searching for an entrance wound, then, unable to find an injury, shouting for Keller—

“He had a reaction,” finished Kaur, her head on one side. Then, quietly: “That must have been very frightening for you.”

Sheppard twisted his neck, rubbing at it with one hand, trying to shake out the tension. “I mean, I don’t—I only have field training, I’m not a medic or anything. We were lucky, because his w—a doctor was with us. She had an epipen in her kit, and he was okay. But that was one of the times I screwed up. And I knew I couldn’t screw up again, because we couldn’t lose him.”

“He wasn’t just important to your mission,” Kaur said. “He was important to you.” Why did she keep restating things he’d said and making them worse.

For a second he couldn’t see anything. Fuck this. “So do you think I need psych meds?”

If Kaur noticed the complete change of subject, she didn’t let it throw her. “We can talk about that later. I’d like to get to know you a little before I start throwing prescriptions at you.”

Sheppard nodded, blotting sweat off his upper lip with his sleeve. Kaur didn’t say anything about that either. “How often do we have to meet?”

“We could do every week for a while. It helps, I think, to have the same day every week. Our kind tends to thrive on routine.” She pulled out a business card and started writing on it. “Do Thursdays work with your PT schedule, Colonel?”

“I’m five days a week there so it doesn’t really matter. In the afternoons, though.”

“Thursday morning, then, at ten,” and Kaur handed him the card. Sheppard put it in his pocket next to his phone, and then remembered he’d been halfway through a conversation with Sam.

“I, um, I sort of met someone,” he blurted out, before he had a chance to overthink it. “He volunteers here, actually. It was his idea that I should maybe talk to to a counselor.”

Kaur folded her glasses and smiled at him again. “It’s good to make a new friend. I’m glad he’s concerned about you, and that you decided to listen to him.”

Later, many weeks later, she would tell him that was what they called, in her line of work, a doorknob confession. Apparently “I met someone, he’s a he” was John’s painfully closeted verbal equivalent of running down the hallway waving a giant rainbow flag and throwing glitter. But at least he’d gotten it out, in some form. At least he was still in the game. Still using his words, still trying.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You've all been miraculously kind. A long bedroom scene is coming next, to reward your patience. I love you madly.


	14. Depart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Warnings at the end, if you need them, for various consensual BDSM activities.)

Sheppard pulled into Sam’s driveway, parked the Camaro behind his bike again. It was Tuesday and he was early, so this time he sat in the car for a long moment, fidgeting, fiddling with his keychain.

It had been a birthday gift from Lorne, a riff on their running gag about forgetting the keys in the jumper. The fob said TROPHY WIFE on one side, letters stamped into heart-shaped stainless steel, and the other side had a place where you were supposed to slide a picture. Of course Lorne had stuck in a picture of McKay, because he was a jackwagon. It was the grainy photo from the database, the one on Rodney’s SGC ID card, in which he was younger maybe than Sheppard had ever seen him.

John looked in the rear-view mirror, raked a hand through his hair pointlessly. He wasn’t nervous, he was just a little early. He checked his Blackberry again. It was 7:48. Okay, he was pitifully early.

He was still staring at it trying to figure out if he should drive around the block a couple times and then come back when it lit up in his hand. _Stop being creepy and get your ass in here, Shep._ He gulped and got out, swinging his left leg out before standing up on his right. He was getting pretty good at that.

He didn’t even ring the bell, Sam just let him in; and then there was an odd complicated moment in the darkened space by the door, during which John couldn’t figure out what to do with his hands or cane or face, or what he should say. Sam was wearing dark gray jeans and a v-neck purple t-shirt and immediately all John could think about was maybe getting to take the shirt off, maybe getting his mouth on Sam’s warm skin.

They eyed each other a moment in the dim coolness, neither speaking, John now uneasily wondering if he’d made a mistake, if it had been just a one-time thing and, shit, maybe he should leave—

Sam had him pressed back against the wall before he knew what hit him. “Thought you might have changed your mind,” he said, hips tight against Sheppard’s, one arm across his throat pinning him down, the other fisted in his shirt, eyes dark and soft and studying John’s face, his cheekbones high and frankly beautiful. John licked his lips, tried to inhale and speak without his voice giving anything away. Sam might be shorter but he was built like a brick house stud and John kind of couldn’t figure out now how he’d ever thought he was straight. The muscles of Sam’s thighs pressed against his, the heat of him seeping through their clothes. John wanted everything, all at once, was dizzy with it; it made him feel almost sick, not knowing what to do first.

Maybe he didn’t have to figure it out. Letting Sam handle things had worked out pretty well last time. He felt his stomach lurch with something maybe like relief.

“I’m not _that_ dumb,” he got out, before Sam’s mouth was on his, hot and demanding, and John proceeded to lose his mind a little, arms finding their way around Sam’s neck and just hanging on, clinging to him, body going gratefully limp under Sam’s weight. Sam’s mouth was firm against his, wet and lush and incredible, and his chest heavy and sweet against John’s. They were kissing and kissing, and it only got better when Sam brought up both hands to tangle them in John’s hair, making a half-frustrated, half-amused groaning sound but not stopping, whispering into his mouth between kisses.

“This wasn’t really—what I—but you look so—” and then more kissing, until John felt his hips rock up on their own, grinding up against Sam without any input from him, and there was a burst of fractionated light behind his eyelids. Sam’s hands dropped unhesitating to John’s ass and he grabbed hard and thrust right back; and everything paused, suspended, in that wide-open half-breath right before the beat drops. John couldn’t breathe. He wanted to touch Sam, but he wasn’t sure where.

This time Sam did pull away, brushing John’s bottom lip slowly with his thumb, as John chased after it with his tongue and tried to focus on Sam’s face, panting.

“Desperate is a good look on you, Shep,” said Sam in that voice of dark honey, sounding satisfied, and nothing about this was fair, it was like John had never commanded an entire city full of marines or barked out orders, stone-faced and sardonic, yelling at Ronon when he got too pushy, hauling Rodney around by the front of his tac vest when he moved too slowly. He felt adrenaline course through him and crest, heart pounding, and tried to remember who he was; gave up and wound his arms around Sam’s neck, held on for dear life. _I used to be a superhero_ , he thought, dazed, somehow filled with too much blood, mouth throbbing and his whole body shamefully needing.

Suddenly it wasn’t okay. He reached down clumsy, almost angrily, to fumble open Sam’s belt buckle, to pop open his top button in irritation and scrabble for the zipper, not taking his eyes off Sam’s, deliberately curling his tongue around the tip of the thumb in his mouth and biting down, hard.

Like a flash Sam’s hand snapped down and encircled his wrist; he pulled it up over John’s head and slammed it against the wall. They stayed poised like this for a half-second, Sam watching him closely, calm but unblinking, as if waiting to see what John would do. He flailed out once, and again tried to twist free before shoving at Sam’s shoulder with his other hand to unbalance him. Without effort Sam caught the other wrist too and held them both up, one in each hand, throwing off John’s own center of gravity so that he was arched against Sam, chest heaving.

Sam coming on to him like this—was a lot. Maybe too much. John wondered if his eyes were as wild as they felt, wanting both to scuffle and to yield. He could probably take him in close quarters. Sam was bigger, and apparently fast; but John was agile, and he fought dirty.

But in one sinuous movement Sam curled his whole body around John, somehow, boxing him in, holding him firmly against the wall, thigh tantalizingly between his, taking the pressure off his wrists. Sam leaned in to kiss him again, a solid warm press of lips that he cut off before it could get interesting, and tightened his fingers around John’s wrists when he made another abortive lunge.

“Do you need to fight me, beautiful?”

 _Fuck._ John’s entire body went slack, like his strings had been cut. He turned his face to one side, trying to hide it. Sam’s free hand came up and turned John’s face back toward him, like John had known he would, but he couldn’t look at him. “Does it help? Does it let you know I’ve got you?”

“God _dammit_ ,” John whispered, cheeks burning, and it was too early for this bullshit.

“Because I have an idea,” Sam said, as unruffled as if they’d been arm wrestling, peeling Sheppard away from the wall and into the curve of his arms. “Come here. Just—hey. Just _come here_.”

Somehow he let Sam move him, and for the moment didn’t fight it. There was more kissing, with Sam’s arms around him; John’s boots and cane stayed in the hallway, and by the door of the bedroom he’d lost his socks and jeans. Sam tossed him easily onto the bed in nothing but boxer briefs, John bouncing a little on the mattress, wincing, and wondering where his t-shirt had gone.

Sam was still wearing all his clothes, belt hanging open suggestively. He followed John’s gaze and laughed a little, snaking it off and throwing it to the floor before picking up something off the chair and holding it out to him. “If you want, but only if you want. I thought you might like it.”

It was a thick coil of plain white rope, a little thinner and softer-looking than he’d used before. John’s entire face felt fuzzy. “But we already, last time—”

Sam shrugged, dropping onto the bed next to John. “That was last time. This is this time.” He traced the line of John’s collarbone, pulled one end of the rope free and just laid a length of it against the skin of John’s upper arm, as if letting him feel it.

Weirdly, this calmed him, out of nowhere, his head drooping and him fighting to stay—what; something, vigilant, alert, against the desire to let go, stop struggling. He nodded, barely, once, then remembered, and managed: “Okay.” His voice was a croak. He shut his eyes.

“I was hoping you’d say yes,” breathed Sam, kneeling up to move behind John, lips on the skin of his shoulder. “Same rules, though: I tell you what I’m going to do, and you say yes every time, or it doesn’t happen. This—won’t take long, and I’m going to keep talking to you. Give me your arms,” and Sam held them together by the wrist again, only this time in the middle of John’s back, and John wriggled forward a little, to give Sam access as he wound cool loops of rope around his wrists repeatedly. It felt like he was making a cuff, like last time, only this time around both John’s wrists, they were being tied together and he waited for panic to crowd up in his chest and cut off his breath, but it didn’t. He concentrated, eyes closed; felt Sam’s fingers, dexterous, working fast, slipping the coils snug and then tying knots without fumbling, like the rope was made out of liquid, like he’d done it a thousand times and John supposed he probably had. Maybe with Riley; with other men.

“It’s called takate kote, it’s a basic box tie,” he said, voice low and soft and thick, hands moving over John’s head to pull several strands together around the upper part of his chest and back to his wrists, then around again in the other direction, slipping a finger underneath the rope several times to check for tension without even slowing down, instinctively. When Sam passed around a second, lower coil, wrapping John’s upper arms and pressing them snugly against the side of his ribcage, a long shaky exhalation came out of him and he slumped forward, involuntarily, but the rope was already holding him upright. “That’s right, you can let go,” Sam said softly, lips against the back of John’s neck, and a shiver moved through him, remembering Sam’s teeth there the last time. But this was this time.

Loops of rope kept slipping around him, lining up along the same two places, above and below his pectorals, but going around and around again and again, thicker and stronger, somehow taking more weight off his spine and holding him more and more firmly in place. “This can be the first part of a suspension,” said Sam in his ear, “but that’s for later, depending.” _Depending on what_ , John wanted to ask, but Sam was doing something complicated around his wrists again that felt skittery and graceful, and honestly John had kind of started losing track of things. “Wait, your leg—move up a bit,” and he scooted forward obediently, until he was on the edge of the bed and his bad leg could rest on the floor, his good one bent underneath him, and that was better. His head sagged and he felt hands pulling him gently back against Sam’s chest, checking tension again, then arms around him, half holding him up, which, he thought dimly, was a good thing, everything had gone hazy around the edges and again he wondered why this wasn’t hurting, wasn’t sadism supposed to hurt.

He slurred as much out loud and felt Sam chuckle. “Give me half a chance, Shep.” 

An indeterminate length of time passed before Sam let him go and John swayed a little, off balance, until he felt Sam’s beard grazing the side of his neck, then fists solidly gripping the tie in the middle of his back, knuckles brushing against his skin. John’s hands slipped off his elbows and he let his wrists flop, but Sam brought them back up and repositioned them again. “No, keep them here, it’s better. Okay, you ready? Up just a little, now, just so you can feel it—” and John hadn’t really moved, but somehow Sam held him slightly lifted, not really off the surface of the bed, just enough that he could imagine what it would be like, no part of him having to keep the rest of him upright, no decision, no effort, all of him wrapped securely and just held. He hovered there, listing forward, head still drooping, and tried to think why he wasn’t sitting up by himself but then gave up and accepted it, the fact that for whatever reason someone else was doing all the work for him, that his body could just stop, and he didn’t bother fighting the rope, just fell second by second more deeply into it, like slipping into a pool of clear, unmoving water, like gliding a puddlejumper into the bay for a landing, he just coasted on the air and let it hold him up.

It was yet another way, he decided vaguely, of getting to that place where everything held still and got so quiet and perfect. Gradually Sam lowered him back all the way to the surface of the bed, and John felt the sheet cool against his shin, his good leg crumpled underneath him. Then Sam’s palms on his shoulders, gliding down to the check the ropes again, and him saying something John couldn’t understand; but after a moment he was lying on his side, which was perfect because he didn’t have to hold his head up anymore but the rope still had him, and he felt Sam lie down behind him, one hand warm on his hip but otherwise apparently content to watch over him while he flew.

Time went away somewhere and he couldn’t be bothered to search for it. After an eternity, or maybe just a few minutes, Sam pressed a kiss against his forehead and he opened his eyes. Sam was in front of him, grinning the cute shameless grin, and running one finger suggestively around the waistline of Sheppard’s boxers. “You’re obviously limber, which is…lucky for you. Because you might be spending a lot more time this way, now that I know how pretty you look tied up. But even flexible people’s circulation—we’re not risking it. Few more minutes. Fifteen at the most.”

Sheppard squinted at this, trying to work out what it meant in terms of him having to move. Nothing, apparently; Sam stood up and rolled John over onto his other side, gently but firmly, then relocated so that he was propped up on one elbow, flirting with the edge of John’s boxers again.

“My god, you’re incredible,” Sam murmured, touching his chest where, to be fair, the rope was, now that John became aware of it, biting a little into his skin, probably reddened, and John remembered Sam had said the same thing at the club. Which, okay, he had questions about that, and about all of this, and he opened his mouth to ask them only to discover that it was already open, and he’d apparently drooled on Sam’s expensive-looking high-thread-count sheets. Classy, Sheppard.

“I’m not that,” he finally slurred, trying to wipe his chin off onto his chest. Sam caught his face in one hand and did it for him, then kissed him, a long wet slide of tongues that made Sheppard see stars. Sam pulled away, a little reluctantly.

“Not what?”

“What you keep calling me.”

“Uh-huh. Only I think that’s exactly what you are, and no one’s ever told you.”

Sheppard tried to think. Nancy used to call him, teasingly, _hot stuff_ , and sometimes, in the throes, _lover_ , which always made him have to smother a laugh; but that was before. Rodney had only ever called him names, but he knew now what they meant. That every insult was an endearment.

“His name was McKay,” he whispered, out of nowhere, and Sam held perfectly still for a second, before he resumed stroking Sheppard’s hair out of his face, nails pressing into his scalp reassuringly.

“Are we doing this now, Shep? Cause we can do this now, but I need to know.”

John tried to shake his head. “I just wanted you to know his name.”

“The genius,” said Sam, eyes flickering over John’s face. “Your Riley.”

“Yeah,” said John, “Only we weren’t—I never told him. I never said anything.”

“Oh, beautiful,” Sam breathed, stroking the side of his neck, his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

John felt his mouth twisting into a grimace, trying to wipe away whatever expression he had on his face. “It’s alright, I don’t want to—just his name. You can know that.”

“Yeah, okay,” answered Sam, hand still cupping his face. Then: “John, what’s going on. Talk to me.”

“What?” He didn’t know. Was something going on?

“You’re pushing, here.” If he concentrated he could feel Sam’s hand on his upper arm, and he was right, his arms were flexed, and John was fighting, but not much, just a little.

“It’s fine. I think it, it maybe helps me feel it.” Which didn’t make any sense, but Sam seemed to understand anyway. He rolled John over to his back, slid a pillow behind him, checking the ropes yet again. Through the stupor Sheppard felt an abrupt flare of annoyance, out of nowhere, sudden and hot, at the tenderness of the gesture.

“I don’t need a fucking—”

“It’s not _for_ you. Hush, be quiet.” And John subsided as fast as he’d become angry, because Sam had reached down to pull off John’s boxer briefs, not particularly carefully; his dick slapped back against his stomach, leaking, and when had he gotten hard? He swallowed, abruptly hyper-aware of how close Sam’s hands were to him. He wanted them on him. Fuck—he actually _wanted_.

“I wasn’t going to touch you at all tonight, but I didn’t know you’d look like this.” The quiet click of a bottle cap. “I have to ask again, though, especially because of what you’ve said—is this okay? Is it something you want?”

He surprised himself, blurting out, “Jesus, yes.” He felt Sam shift above him. John tried to raise his head to look but couldn’t, it felt inordinately heavy. Sam half-laughed, then wedged another pillow underneath his neck. “Figures you’d want to see. Pilots, man. You’re all control freaks.”

Sheppard was trying to assemble a joke about that when the first tight glide brought him arching up off the sheets, gasping. When he could open his eyes again Sam had gone down on his knees between John’s thighs, shirt finally off, all warm rounded angles and planes, looking up at John through his eyelashes and not even trying not to look like sex on legs, his grip wet and slick and snug and slowly speeding up, John’s cock disappearing, flushed and swollen, into his fist, a string of clear precome trailing from the head, and John could feel himself getting wetter, the sounds of them together sticky and slapping, faster and faster, driving every other thought from his mind. He couldn’t stop his hips from jerking up into Sam’s hand until Sam put his other palm down low on John’s belly, pressed him against the mattress to keep him still, and god help him but it was good, being held down like that, Sam’s weight against him keeping him from thrashing. Sam was watching, his mouth open a little, looking down at Sheppard’s cock, the head turning dark red as his hips kept stuttering, trying to thrust, and Sam shifted his wrist angle, did something inexplicable and twisting, and the slow gradual speeding-up turned into Mach fucking 3, Sam just working him over fast and taut and incredibly _perfect_ , and John let out a strangled sound, balls drawing up tight against his skin.

“That’s—Sam, I’m going to—”

“No you’re not,” said Sam, and just took his hand away without ceremony in mid-stroke, criminally, cruelly, spreading Sheppard’s legs and palming the insides of his thighs, then leaving short stinging slaps, hands careless and rough where they’d just been competent and assured. For a second John thought he would still come untouched, insides of his thighs throbbing, just from the memory of Sam’s fist around him, but then felt himself incrementally backing away from whatever ledge he’d been dangling off of. He slumped back on the pillow, trying to catch his breath before Sam had him again, this time leaning up over Sheppard, one hand gripping and pulling him half-upright by the rope around his chest, the other around his dick again but slack, just playing lightly up and down, teasingly slow, one finger trailing along the sensitive underside, then a few loose strokes before abruptly letting him go again, and John moaned, flat-out straining against the knots.

“I’m not going to let you come, so you can just put that out of your mind,” said Sam in his ear, and John moaned again, chest expanding against the loops of rope, barely feeling them digging into his skin, because all he could think was that he needed to be touched, was burning up with it, hips snapping forward again and again trying to reach Sam’s skin, breath a high whine in his throat. 

Without warning Sam grabbed him by both arms and flipped him over, John’s face shoved into the pillows and ass high in the air, and he didn’t have time to be embarrassed about this because immediately Sam’s smooth palms were there, warm and skimming over the three-day-old bruises, gentle until they weren’t anymore.

The first slap rang out in the room, rang into John’s bones, and the sound he made was somewhere between a choke and a sob, his whole body suddenly alight and at attention, gear down and locked, ready for landing. “Look at you,” he heard Sam saying with what sounded like astonishment, fingertips apparently tracing the outline he’d just made, and then another blow, and another, each one spraypainting the insides of John’s brain with spangled colors and spirals of shuddering light.

Sam was clearly swinging from the shoulder and each slap drove John’s face further into the pillow, which helped with the noises he was making. He bit down on one corner, the wad of cotton filling his mouth and giving him something he could clench around, could control, until Sam let go of his grip on the rope in the middle of John’s back and reached up to yank the pillow away. “If you want me to stop you have to tell me, so I need you able to talk,” he said, sounding winded, and John was a little gratified to hear that Sam was struggling to get words out as well. He tried to say _please don’t stop, keep going, I don’t want you to stop_ , but all that came out was a pleading, drawn-out “ _Sam—_ ”

“That doesn’t sound like no,” said Sam, his voice a soft burr, and then he was holding John by his wrists again, bearing him down into the bed and striking him, again, and again, each impact flaring and settling into John’s skin like molten heat, making his cock fill, impossibly harder, slapping up against his belly with each blow. Another, another another, he couldn’t keep track of them. He thought he was probably crying now but wasn’t even going to try to stop; felt an unexpectedly soft, cautious touch at his hip, and then Sam’s hand closing around him, hot and firm and good, he was already going to come and he wasn’t supposed to, he wasn’t supposed to—

“No,” said John, and immediately Sam wasn’t anywhere, there was just empty air, and the loss of his touch was terrible. “Wait,” he tried again, turning his head, “I didn’t mean everything, just—”

Sam paused, midway through backing off the bed; shifted forward a little to clench a hand in John’s hair and drag him upright, eyes searching his face, his own skin gleaming with sweat. John sucked in air, felt tears dripping off his chin. “Fuck, you’re perfect,” Sam said wonderingly. “You’re trying not to come.”

“Well you _told_ me,” John started to explain, and Sam closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them there was something blank and vicious there and it made John’s insides melt, which made no sense, but was true. This was all a true thing, it was turning him inside out, but it was somehow okay to be here, okay to let this happen. He swayed a little in Sam’s grip, pain sparking from the roots of his hair, blinking at Sam, wondering why it had all stopped and how to make it start again.

“You told me not to,” he tried again, dizzily.

“There’s only one thing I have to say to that, beautiful,” Sam said, voice gone husky, and he drew back slowly, enough to telegraph the movement, and slapped John, hard, across the face. John felt it jolt through his spine straight down to his dick; he reeled and would have gone down except for Sam’s fingers around the ropes, holding him upright. Apparently needing symmetry, Sam did it again on the other side, and this time John felt his balls draw up and his entire body strain to come.

“Oh my god,” he rasped, ears ringing, trying to understand, “why is it so fucking _good_ —”

“It just is,” said Sam simply, and took John’s face in his hands and kissed him, hard. They knelt there on the bed for a long moment, Sam carefully straddling his bad leg and just kissing the spit out of him, John’s eyelashes clumping together, his cheek throbbing, wrists starting to go numb, his erection poking Sam in the stomach in what must have been an uncomfortable way, Sam’s own cock pressed between them, heavy and neglected inside his jeans. Sam reached between them to touch John again, grip just this side of painful and dry, callouses catching on his skin ( _freeweights_ , John thought, irrelevantly), holding him upright almost entirely with his fist curled around the rope, and stopping the exact instant the muscles in John’s thighs went rigid.

This time John made a sound like he was dying, and Sam laughed, eyes still holding whatever that blank indifferent look meant, and let go of the rope, pushing at his chest just enough to shift him off balance, making him fall backward. John hit the mattress squirming, cock slapping up against his stomach, and fought not to thrust up into empty air. “Maybe later,” Sam said, voice dark and amused, before following him down and kissing him again. And yet when Sam sat him up, and moved behind him to begin unfastening the knots, John started laughing and couldn’t stop, even with blood rushing back through his arms down into his fingertips like pain made of water, Sam’s hands rubbing tenderly at the rope marks and him just laughing, helpless with it, until again, like last time, Sam was massaging his hands and brushing tears off his face and telling him to breathe.

“I can’t not breathe,” said Sheppard, pretty sensibly, he thought, considering.

“Yeah, you _say_ that,” Sam responded, skeptically, and half-dragged, half-shoved John back against the headboard with one arm, sticking a pillow behind his head, which was good, because John couldn’t hold it up by himself. “Here—” and he dampened a washcloth with water from a bottle beside the bed, and John presented his face like a child and let Sam wipe it clean; he was exhausted and trembling a little. Sam tossed the washcloth on the floor and made John drink the rest of the bottle before he pulled him in tight against his chest. It was the best John had felt in months. Or since Saturday anyway.

“What about later,” he managed, and felt the rumble of Sam’s amusement.

“Nothing against how hot you are, but I think we need a breather,” Sam told him, tucking the top of John’s head against his chin, which shouldn’t have worked as well as it did but was mysteriously perfect. “Shit, I didn’t even ask if you’d had dinner. Have you had dinner?”

He thought about it for a second. “Probably not?”

“What the hell does that mean, _probably not_.”

“It means I don’t understand any of this,” was the last thing he remembered saying, before the cool spinning circles of Sam’s ceiling fan and the arm slung around his shoulders pulled him under.

•

“I have questions,” was the next thing he said, as they were sitting on the floor of Sam’s living room, putting away rotini with red sauce like their lives depended on it, half-watching the Women’s British Open on ESPN with the volume down low, although John found the background noises of golf reassuring. It turned out Sam played, too, and John thought for a second about finding a course before realizing his backswing would be trash, given that he had only had one working knee. Mo Martin was tied with six other players; John watched her sink a neat eagle on the last hole.

“Shoot,” said Sam, still distractingly bare-chested, reaching for his wine glass. He’d waved the bottle at John questioningly but John had shaken his head, not sure about drinking around him.

Martin drove what was almost an albatross, but the ball hit the flagpole and bounced about five feet back out onto the green. There was a low sympathetic sound from the spectators.

Sheppard put his plate down on the coffee table, then leaned back against the sofa and crossed his arms over his chest. He’d put his t-shirt back on and felt slightly less defenseless.

“Okay,” he said, just as Martin sank the putt. “Mostly, what are you even getting out of this.”

Sam’s dramatic reaction would have been comical, if John had been in a laughing mood. They stared at each other for a beat. There was polite scattered applause from the television.

“You’re really not kidding.”

John heard his voice get grouchy and mean, take on that nasal pitch that Rodney called _whining,_ without his really intending it. “ _No_ , Sam, I’m _not_ kidding.”

“But seriously?

“Yes, seriously! I’m getting—endorphins, and, and, _chemicals_ , but you’re doing all the work and I didn’t even get you off either time, and this seems like the _worst hobby in the world_.”

Sam burst out laughing, shaking his head in disbelief. “Shit, okay. I guess I gotta explain this one.”

John kept his arms crossed, mouth pressed in a straight line.

“You’d look a lot more intimidating if your hair weren’t standing straight up,” Sam observed, and moved up to the sofa, combing his fingers through John’s hair like he had a right to do that, then switching to his shoulders and digging in with both thumbs. Sheppard’s eyes threatened to close but he fought it. He deserved answers.

“So, try this. Imagine what it feels like to want to hurt someone you care about. Not a bad guy; not a bandit, not someone shooting at you. Someone you like, someone you’re close to.”

“Why…would I want to do that,” John said, immediately thinking about sparring with Teyla. He tried to get hits in, sure, but it was for the fun of it, not because he wanted to see her in pain (and also, maybe, a little bit, to prove he still wore the pants around the place. Which was idiotic, because even in a tiny leather skirt Teyla could still kick his ass eight ways from Sunday.)

“Exactly. Think about it for a second: you’re dating a woman and you want to hit her. What does that make you?”

“An asshole?”

“Pretty much. How about—if she lets you, doesn’t say anything, doesn’t fight back—does that mean you can?”

John stretched out his bad leg, relaxing into Sam’s hands despite himself. “But I fight back.”

Sam’s fingers were back in his hair, sifting through the strands; it was maddening, how good it felt. “Yeah you do. But stay with me for a second. _If_ she doesn’t say stop, _can_ I hurt my partner.”

John had a vivid mental image of Teyla pressing the delicate arch of her bare foot down on his neck, laughing and laughing while he wheezed in frustration, palms still stinging, sticks having been flung like toothpicks to opposite sides of the room. “Of course not.”

“Okay, so how do I know if she really does want to be hurt? Even if she’s _saying_ no?”

John eyed him. “A double-sided contract signed in mechanical pencil?”

“Getting there. Try another gender, now. Say there’s this pilot; white guy, little older than me. Thinks he’s badass, scowls and limps around all dramatic. Drunk hair, can’t dress himself. Pointy little goblin ears.”

“Fuck you,” said John, but since his eyes were closed again and Sam was massaging behind each of the ears in question, there wasn’t any heat in it.

“Legitimately bad shit has happened to this dude, though. So you’d think he’d need, like, a blanket and movie night and a box of doughnuts, not to be spanked raw.”

John opened one eye. “I don’t even like doughnuts.”

Sam’s fingers arrested in mid-movement. “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

“You heard me. Too sweet.” He always gave his to Rodney.

“That’s just not—okay, tabling the doughnut thing for another time. My point still stands: you get off on something that most people don’t get off on, at all.”

That seemed to be true, new and disorienting and degrading as it was. John kept his eyes shut.

“And _because_ you like it—no, actually: because you _really_ like it, I get to let a part of myself out, that normally everything in the world tells me is bad and wrong and scary and should probably be thrown in jail.”

At this John tilted back his head and tried to look at Sam upside down. “Being black, is that part of it?”

“That too.”

It was quiet for a minute, but it wasn’t a bad silence. On the television Shanshan Feng was struggling to stay under par. She missed a ten-foot birdie putt and the audience didn’t make a sound.

Sam sighed, let go of John’s shoulders after one last squeeze, and flopped down lengthwise on the sofa, shading his eyes with one hand from the kitchen light. “Gotta be honest with you, I thought you would keep wrestling me but as soon as the first loop went around, you went down like timber. I’ve seen rope-stoned subs before but you were perfect.”  
  
“Subs,” Sheppard asked, trying the word out in his mouth. It made him think of sandwiches.

Sam shrugged. “Technically, rope bottom, but I don’t know how much you really care about terminology.”

 _Rope-stoned._ He remembered drooling, and flashed back to sophomore year. That sounded about right.

John stood up, which took a bunch of extra, complicated movements, and sat down awkwardly on the edge of the sofa; Sam scooted back obligingly to make room.

“Has it started to make sense? In conclusion, colonel, I get more out of this than you apparently realize. Orgasms aren’t the point, for me. Real talk? I can have those all by my own damn self. You letting me do what I want with you, though, it’s a rush, it’s like—” Sam stopped, then visibly redirected. “It’s amazing. You have no idea what you do to me.”

John felt himself blushing, turned to say something flippant about his great beauty being famed across galaxies, before he realized the joke would fall flat without the stargate part. Sam cut him off anyway.

“And _don’t_ —be sarcastic, or throw it back at me. Just take it. I like you, Sheppard. You can handle that.”

After the initial shock, Sheppard thought he could deal with it. “Then I want to have sex.”

Sam fumbled the remote. “You—you want to have _sex_.”

“With you,” he clarified.

Sam looked at him blankly.

“Before I turn fifty would be great.”

Sam turned off the television, and put the remote down on the coffee table. “Okay first of all, I don’t think you’re allowed to say you haven’t had sex when I just—”

John folded his arms again, which had long been his first line of defense against Rodney. “ _Reciprocal_ sex. With orgasms in it, even if they aren’t the point.”

“What about maybe being asexual?”

“What about it? I can still want to have sex. If I don’t like it I’ll tell you.” John wasn’t sure about this, at all. But he felt stubborn and pig-headed about it, like if he was doing this, he wanted to do it thoroughly. Besides he’d never really been bothered by sex, before; just hadn’t ever gone looking for it. But the way Sam had kissed him in the hallway—it was scary enough, that pulling-Gs feeling in the pit of his stomach, to make him want it even more, perversely.

Sam cleared his throat, still looking skeptical. “You already know what I’m gonna say, right.”

“Sure—you want to talk about it for a few hours, do some more queep, make sure our horoscopes match, maybe write a poem….”

“No,” said Sam, slowly, “I just want to know if we should use condoms. I’d rather go down on you without one.”

Oh. _Oh._ John couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d had sex, which was beyond tragic (that lieutenant from the _Daedalus?_ that other lieutenant?). Atlantis had been all-consuming, and Rodney more high-maintenance than an actual trophy wife. But Keller had done a full panel on him before he’d come earthside. Aside from having alien genetics, a missing kidney, and a bent leg, he was boringly healthy.

“Disease-free,” said John, spreading his hands invitingly. How sad was it, that these days that was his biggest selling point. “And,” he added, because Sam had mentioned it before, “I’m not really dating, and I don’t plan to, um, start sleeping with anyone else. Or letting them hit me, for that matter.”

Suddenly Sam was all up in his space, both hands gripping his t-shirt, mouth at the hollow of his throat. “Same here,” he said, breath hot against the skin of John’s neck. He dragged Sheppard up alongside him on the couch; their mouths found each other and they lay there making out furiously, long enough for John to get hard again and try to rub against him. Sam cupped his ass, groaning, and then slapped it, just once, hard enough for Sheppard to startle and curse. “Not tonight, though.”

John looked at him like he was insane. Maybe he was. Maybe all doms were. John didn’t remember having that level of self-control in his thirties, or ever. Maybe Sam was normal, and John really was a slut. He’d never been Captain Kirk, contra Rodney’s jealousy, but there had been…various women, on various planets. All he really knew was that Sam made him feel frantic, and wanting everything at once. It was terrifying and exhilarating, like things that usually only happened to him in a cockpit, and he felt it pushing at him from inside, the need to move, get past that first jolt of pure fear, the pucker-factor of being thousands of feet up in the air with nothing beneath you, and hurry on to the good part, the part that would be all skin and hands and mouths and breath and soaring.

But Sam was shaking his head, albeit a little ruefully. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but you look exhausted, Sheppard, and I have trainees at 0800. I want to go to bed with you but mostly what I want to do with you in that bed is shove your snoring ass over to the far side of it and pass out.” Fair enough; he’d been almost weaving on his feet when he walked in anyway, was currently clutching feebly at Sam’s belt loops, and he was forty-four, not twenty-four. His boner could wait.

“Besides, I want you fully conscious when I fuck you. Come on, beautiful,” said Sam, and slid an arm around him, standing them both up and steering John back toward the bedroom.

But this time, under the ceiling fan, even with Sam breathing evenly next to him, one hand curled over John’s hip, he couldn’t stop thinking. It was the usual, except he wasn’t drunk. He watched the dark ceiling, and scenes from Atlantis played out, scrolling across it in lurid color across it like a silent movie on a shitty small-town cinema screen. Teaching Torren how to throw a football, showing Ronon how to play barre chords on the guitar. Standing behind Woolsey the day they’d left the Milky Way and set out on their own again, because Atlantis had never belonged anywhere but Pegasus. Working on the farm with Kanaan in a cheerful, days-long silence that never got awkward, no matter how little they had to say to each other. Sitting on the pier with Rodney, grimly starting on their second six-pack, a few days after Jennifer had miscarried again, Rodney drunk and bewildered, saying the same things over and over, John having no idea how to respond, mostly just opening beers for him and hoping listening was enough. Making eye contact with Teyla over the heads of some particularly sketchy locals and communicating wordlessly that this formal dinner was about to go completely soup sandwich, and just about the time the village leader had turned to him and said sweetly that they liked Lorne so much they intended to keep him, everyone’s swords suddenly drawn in his startled face, John diving under the table and rolling out the exact second that Ronon tossed him his P-90, like they’d coordinated it beforehand. Arguing with Beckett about soccer, which John actually secretly liked. Arguing with Teyla, but politely, passive-aggressively, about dumb stuff that didn’t even come close to disguising how obvious and blatant it was that he just didn’t want her to leave Atlantis. Arguing with Rodney, always, about everything. Waking up with his face stuck to an unfiled report, Zelenka handing him a fresh cup of coffee and the two of them standing at the window and watching it rain outside, one of the silvery slow ones that lasted for days and days.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Said activities include bondage, spanking, face-slapping, and orgasm denial. YOU'RE WELCOME.)
> 
> (Also, I would still be stuck editing this chapter were it not for the magical beta skills of betts and starskin. I owe them each a pound of Kona blend, another pound of dark chocolate, and my life, probably.)


	15. Flight Risk

Sam woke, and it was still dark, but he knew something was wrong, he just didn’t know what. It was familiar, though, that feeling, so he knew enough to just to lie still, and wait, and figure it out.

After a long moment he opened his eyes. Ceiling fan. Slats of streetlight slashed across the wall. Stateside, then. Not Bagram. Riley was dead; that had happened. Steve and Natasha were okay.

He waited another minute or two before turning his head and realizing: Sheppard had peaced out sometime earlier. The sheets were rumpled on his side and there was a dent in the pillow, but the bed seemed somehow empty, which didn’t make sense since Sam was still in it.

He rolled over and found his phone on the floor, next to a crumpled plastic water bottle. He lay there for a minute with his face hanging over the edge of the bed. There were messy coils of rope all over the floor, because he’d thrown it every which way and not dealt with it before racking out. He hadn’t dealt with some other stuff, too. Like he was going to have to rethink that entire scene, and the way he’d come dangerously close to losing it a couple of times, as well as their wholly unexpected conversation afterward. But first, he’d check on John.

 _Too bad you punched out, I have bacon_.

No response, probably because—he double-checked—it wasn’t quite 5 am yet. John might still be driving home.

But that meant 6 am on the East Coast. Fuck it. He’d leave a message if he had to. This had gone on long enough and he wasn’t sure why but suddenly the need to know was urgent.

He sat up, turned on a light and called Tony, who picked up before it even rang.

“Don’t you soldier-type people refer to this as _oh dark hundred?”_

“Nice to hear your voice, Stark. Sort of thought you might be up.”

“Actually I seem not to have maybe ever…quite…gone to sleep. How’s it hanging, Toucan Sam.”

Steve had said Tony wasn’t doing so hot these days, so Sam sighed inaudibly and told himself not to take the bait. “Gonna cut to the chase, here: I need intel. The classified kind. It might be…our kind of thing.”

Tony made a garbled noise that Sam thought must be unrelated to their call; in the background there was hysterical beeping, followed by a metallic crushing sound and then abrupt silence. “You do realize I’m a scientist, not an intelligence analyst.”

“You can’t tell me you don’t have access to military files. Because I won’t believe you.”

Tony hummed and Sam could almost hear the 3D browser tabs opening. “I could in fact tell you that, but yes, I’d be lying my face off. Go ahead.”

This was bad. Sam put his face in his hands for a second, before getting out of bed and starting to pull on jeans; he’d change into his flight suit at Ellington. “Colonel John Sheppard, USAF. Says he’s a pilot, definitely seen action, but I can’t figure out where or when, after Afghanistan. Just came off a ten-year tour—says last posted at McMurdo, but that doesn’t sound right. Something’s off. Way off.”

“McMurdo? Yeah there’s no military presence there, definitely no base. But, come to think of it, huh,” said Tony, then wandered off mentally somewhere, his voice distracted enough that Sam could tell he had the internal equivalent of a hundred tabs open, hands snatching and flinging around various scraps of information in his freaky sci-fi transparent user interface.

“Unsurprisingly, I’m correct,” he started again. “The Air National Guard provides logistics support down there, but that’s it. There _is_ something connected to McMurdo that I’ve always wondered about. JARVIS, pull up records on the Area 51 bombing…right. That’s what I….”

Sam rooted around in the drawer for clean socks; tried to be patient while Tony went wherever it was he’d gone in his glowy mind palace. After a couple of minutes, he tried clearing his throat. Nothing. He counted to a hundred before he spoke, tying his running shoes. He’d hit the gym after work.

“Listen, Stark, I can call back if this isn’t a good—” at which point Tony hung up on him.

Sam looked at his phone and made a face that started out as disbelief but fetched up somewhere near the end as resignation. Fair enough; they’d barely met in person. Stark would be in touch when he had something. Sam had given him Sheppard’s name, rank, and last known assignment—way more than he should have done, anyway, and yeah, he was kind of nauseated about that.

But what if Really Really Classified was SHIELD, or HYDRA; or the Chitauri, or worse? He felt like they needed to know, like he owed it to Steve to find out.

“Still shitty,” he informed his phone, and threw it facedown on the bed away from him, frustrated. He couldn’t just _ask_ John, was the problem. Not if he wanted an answer this century.

He coiled the rope; methodically tied off each bundle before storing them back in the duffle. In the bathroom he ran his head under the cold tap, then toweled off, frowning at his fade, which needed cleaning up. When Sheppard had finally texted on Monday, after his _be right back_ , explaining his appointment at the VA, Sam had surprised himself by almost going limp with relief. He really didn’t mind John’s initial emotional meltdown; at no point had he thrown punches or tried to take Sam on—he’d known who he was the whole time, who they both were. Sam wasn’t bothered by people having feelings, especially when he’d just spanked the shit out of them. But he already cared, goddammit, and he didn’t want to see John in that kind of pain if it could get better.

Would knowing more about him really help? What if Sheppard’s last mission turned out to be just regular classified? Sam would feel like a paranoid asshole, and silently make it up to him with pasta, backrubs, televised golf, judicious applications of endorphins, and motorcycle rides.

Suddenly that didn’t seem like enough. He sat back down on the bed and got Tony’s incredibly annoying outgoing message.

“Stark, me again. While I’m calling in markers.” He took a breath, then went on. “If you don’t come up with anything, can you get me clearance to get someone on a T-38 at Ellington? Same, uh, same guy. He’d be O-6, multiple combat missions—shouldn’t be a problem with someone else in the front seat. Let me know, okay. And if I need to put anything on lockdown for you guys.” He hung up, still feeling squirrelly and vaguely queasy. Maybe he should have gone through Steve? But Steve already knew he’d caught feelings for this idiot—or something like them—and that was just gonna complicate shit.

He ran his hands over his face, grimacing. Come the fuck on; this was _already_ complicated. Like John out of the blue announcing he wanted to have sex. Sam didn’t trust it. It seemed too much like the kind of thing a jockey like Sheppard would pull out of nowhere just to fuck with himself, like he wasn’t already clearly fucked up enough as it was. One therapy session was a start but Sam knew he’d better throttle back on that whole idea before stuff got out of hand. As out of hand as it had nearly gotten last night, with him first accosting (nearly mauling) Sheppard in the hallway, and then adding a couple of under-negotiated activities to the scene without clear verbal. Not that Sheppard hadn’t obviously been more than okay with it, but it still wasn’t cool. Sam knew when was on tilt. Not a lot, but enough to make him pissed off at himself, because he goddamn well _knew better_. Maybe he needed to be back in therapy himself, given the way things were going.

He wondered how Bucky was really doing; if Steve could reliably get anything out of him that wasn’t in Russian. His phone buzzed, and he grabbed for it. Tony was already in mid-sentence.

“—about just one thing: how, in the alligator-strewn and Nile-virus infested rural wilds of the deep South, did you manage to find _this particular guy_?”

Sam refrained from correcting Tony’s geography, which was fine because JARVIS butted in smoothly before he could respond. “The population of Houston is actually 2.2 million, Mr. Stark.”

“You know what I mean. It’s still _bucolic.”_

“The population of Manhattan is, for purposes of comparison, just over 1.6 million.”

“Why are you spouting census statistics at me, I’m perfectly capable of—”

“ _Stark_ ,” said Sam. “This particular guy?”

“Right,” Tony said. “First of all, he wasn’t lying; his last time in the air really was support to McMurdo, out of Stratton Air National Guard Base in Schenectady. Mostly cargo, some transport. Charmingly enough, by the way, it’s called Operation Deep Freeze. Only run missions during the summer, though. Over the winter, scientists and staff have to survive without regular shipments of candy bars and—anyway. Here’s the thing: that _was_ ten years ago, and that’s the last time he shows up on _any_ flight plans, anywhere. After that he’s been stationed at Peterson, but according to this hasn’t flown a single mission.” Tony went quiet again for an interminable moment. “No, not that one, JARVIS; the other one. Okay, so here’s the really weird part, and I hope you’re sitting down.”

“Go ahead,” said Sam, through his teeth.

“We hit a security wall JARVIS couldn’t breach. Which, totally not your fault, buddy, I get it.”

“Thank you, sir,” said JARVIS sonorously.

“But here’s why we couldn’t get access: it’s not military, it’s CIA.”

Sam thought about this. John could have been recruited, maybe, if he’d been special ops—which of course he had been, or still was, that wasn’t even the question. But Sam knew field agents; hell, he knew Romanoff. It didn’t fit. John wasn’t the type. Stark seemed to read his mind.

“I don’t think your guy’s a spook, Wilson. To be honest, he got tasked with McMurdo because of some cowboy shit he pulled outside Kabul, so he clearly doesn’t work or play well with others.”

Oh, he played well with others alright. Sam cleared his throat.

“What kind of shit?”

“The kind where you disobey a direct order and go back for your men, but then fuck it up and get your Pave Hawk shot down, and also everyone but you dies. And by the way he did that _twice_.”

Jesus. Okay. That would definitely get you sent to Antarctica to fly cargo. “So why the CIA wall?”

“I think his real project’s hidden there. There’s an entire set of files I shouldn’t have even known existed, except that I know everything and in particular I know a guy from Kuwait: Major General Hank Landry, whose extremely attractive daughter—”

“It might be unnecessary for Sgt. Wilson to be made aware of this part, sir,” interrupted JARVIS.

“What is this, a conference call? I’m putting you on mute. The point is: if I can’t open them, I shouldn’t even be able to _see_ them. But someone’s attached data to an old CIA op called the Stargate Project—total bust, one of those pointless boondoggles that someone got approved just because the total budget was a drop in the Cold War bucket compared to defense contracts.”

Sam didn’t say anything; just listened, mind racing.

“Anyway, Stargate officially folded in 1995, it’ll probably be declassified any minute now. Mostly magic-trick stuff, experiments in whether ‘remote viewing’ could be useful for gathering intel, and the answer was patently no, because it’s pseudoscience, as even the Senate Intelligence Committee had to acknowledge. But. Beginning around 1994, someone started appending all these files, which, may I repeat, _aren’t actually there_ , to the original project, and Sam, we’re not talking terabytes of data, this is several hundred thousand _exabytes_ , and I know birds can’t count that high but it’s—”

“A lot of zeroes, got it,” said Sam heavily. “How does Sheppard connect to this.”

Tony hesitated, an almost inaudible hitch, but Sam heard it nonetheless. “You know how in spy movies they always say, _if I told you I’d have to kill you?”_

“You said Area 51,” Sam pressed.

“I literally have no idea how to explain this, and I’m never going to tell you how I figured it out or the size of the favor I just had to call in, so I’m just going to say it and you’ll have to cope however you can: Sheppard was—I’m pretty sure he was behind the bombing of Area 51.”

Sam closed his eyes, seeing John’s face: drawn with pain, pinched, closed-off, except for those few moments when Sam had caught him with his guard down, relaxed and softened by sleep. When Sam had asked, he’d said he flew mostly helos. Was that because he got sick of dropping payloads?

“I’m sure even you are old enough to remember—it was about six months before the Incident. Pursuant to which attack that part of St. Elsewhere was evacuated, if there was anyone left, which I…sort of doubt given the aerial photos I just saw. Then they just blocked it off. Anything still in those buildings, they must’ve moved out to Nellis. Maybe a broken arrow kind of thing, a black project gone horribly awry—if they called in an aerial strike on their own damn selves, I don’t know.”

Sam’s mind went blank, and he heard himself blurting out, “Tony, I was stationed at Nellis.”

“Oh. By which I mean, of course you were: that’s where you tested the EXO. Of course.”

Sam blew out a breath. “Yeah, it stayed fenced off. None of us even wanted to ask about it. Weird debris, too.” You just learned, where the Site was concerned, not to ask too many questions, not to get too far afield of your own project. He and Riley had been busy anyway, only there half the time, the rest of the time at Bagram, pulling as many people as they could.

“But this is where it gets weird.”

“Okay,” Sam said, rattled. It seemed plenty weird enough.

(How could a lone fighter have dropped a payload there, though, without being chased down? The Box was right in the middle of Nellis, wall-to-wall carpeted with Vipers and Eagles and two dozen other kinds of unnamed lethal flying objects. They would have scrambled before Sheppard had even hit the edge of their airspace. Why not shoot him down? What the hell had his target been?)

“Around the same time, as in, later that same day, _something_ , and I’m being deliberately vague here because I genuinely have no idea what the fuck it was, landed in the Pacific, just outside the San Francisco Bay, and it stayed there. For several months. And I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure _that’s_ your pilot’s Really Classified assignment.”

“…something,” echoed Sam.

“A _big_ something,” Tony elaborated.

“I don’t remember this being on the news.”

“Have we taught you nothing about controlling information?”

Sam held out his hands, though Stark couldn’t see this. “Something bigger than an aircraft.”

“Bigger than several dozen aircraft _carriers_. At least a kilometer across—almost bigger than the widest part of the goddamn Golden Gate Bridge. Made one hell of a splash.”

Sam still wasn’t getting it. “And no one could see this…big _something,_ because…”

Stark made an unpleasant sound. “Presumably because it was cloaked, and also because they would have stabbed out your eyeballs if you’d caught a glimpse of it? I don’t think you’re appreciating how difficult this information was to come by, Orville. Fortunately the California governor owed all of us approximately eighteen squillion favors, and someone in the EPA was horrified enough by the volume of displaced water and coastline damage to write a report, which obviously got promptly buried. But still. I’m not saying bribery was involved, but I _am_ saying that Pepper and I now have to appear at the mayor’s fancy dress ball in October, and she’s going to be thrilled about that…for several reasons, not least because she’s supposed to be at her favorite yoga retreat in Bali, so you can imagine my—”

“What happened to it?” Sam interrupted, standing up and starting to pace. “The really big something.”

“Air Force quit obsessively hovering over the shipping lanes just outside the Bay in mid-July, which is also when they started allowing recreational craft inside an area that had been a no-fly zone. It clearly went _somewhere_ , though, because if something that big had been destroyed, we’d all know about it. And also because these invisible-yet-annoyingly-still-present files keep being appended all the way through to, um, let me see—yeah, about fourteen hours ago. They’ve never stopped.”

Sam exhaled and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to sort through all this. “Okay. I—thanks, Tony. I owe you.”

“And I’ll remember that, believe me, next time Steve needs you to commute to your day job up here. Which brings me to my final point, and then we never had this conversation and I’m not even quite sure who you are: no T-38 rides for the full-bird colonel. He’s flown half-a-dozen different fighter jets, as well as pretty much every helicopter in service, but sorry, Woodstock, your boy couldn’t get clearance for a paper airplane at this point, thanks to this ten-year business.”

Suddenly, Sam put it together. “He’d have to requalify?”

“I don’t know what he _has_ been flying, but as far as the USAF is concerned, he’s lost currency.”

“So—classroom instruction…”

“…ground trials, test flights, the whole nine. Circuits and bumps.”

 _Jesus_ , Sam thought, _no wonder the guy’s depressed_. Sam felt depressed just imagining it. He’d been grounded for so long it had almost stopped hurting, but it never really went away, the need to move in three instead of two dimensions.

“Word of advice? You could use the expensive special forces training for which I and other citizens of this fine country paid through the nose, and get _him_ to talk to you. Whatever he’s up to, it’s clearly our wheelhouse, or adjacent. But I need better information if I’m going to try to access those encrypted files, and it would be nice to know more about…whatever it is, preferably _before_ it bites us in the ass. So, you know. Little candlelight, bottle of red, some Drake, maybe Sade, I personally like Massive Attack—what the fuck,” Stark said, indistinctly, and then: “No!—ugh, okay, _fine_.”

“Hey, Sam,” said Natasha, her voice husky and amused. “Is Tony being a dick?”

“I’m standing _right here,_ ” said Tony, aggrieved.

“Nah, I got this,” Sam reassured her. “Everything okay there? Everything that’s not Stark, I mean.”

“We’re good,” Natasha said, laconic as ever. Sam could never tell if things were really good or if she were maybe strangling someone with one hand and ironing her hair with the other. “Steve’s still hopeless. SHIELD’s pretty fucked up. Bucky’s a lot better. He only sleeps in the hall closet sometimes.”

That was…one hell of a sitrep. “No one trying to kill anyone?”

“Not since Thursday,” she reported. Sam figured that was a win.

“I suggest a reputable Malbec,” Tony said, voice raised, out of breath, apparently scuffling with Natasha for proximity to the speaker, though somehow Sam visualized her just stolidly holding him at arm’s length. “Even affordable Willamette Valley pinot noirs have their good points.”

“What? Australian Syrah, all the way,” said Clint out of nowhere, and, okay, this call was officially too much for Sam.

“All y’all are assholes, and I’m hanging up now,” he informed them, then flopped back on the bed, thinking. Looking up at the ceiling and trying to figure out how he could sink a big enough eyehook in there, in a weight-bearing beam, and still be able to remove it when he eventually moved out. If he painted it white, no one would even notice it was there.

But Area 51? And _why?_ That was a story he needed to hear, before things went much further. He couldn’t put off asking the questions anymore, no matter what the answers were. Something had fucked Sheppard up and it hadn’t been in Antarctica. Maybe in Nevada; maybe San Francisco Bay. Maybe somewhere else, in the years since then.

Honestly, he was more of a pinot gris guy, himself. Plus it was hard to go wrong with Jill Scott.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nerd notes: the CIA's [Stargate Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project) absolutely existed, and it was fully as weird as it sounds. Tony also accurately describes the absence of US military in Antarctica, and the Air National Guard support of scientists/staff there, [Operation Deep Freeze](http://science.dodlive.mil/operation-deep-freeze/). (By the way, it's always bugged me that Sheppard drops off O'Neill in a helo—they're really not safe in snowstorms, which is why the ANG uses LC-130s.)
> 
> Finally, Area 51 being inside Nellis AFB, it really would have been impossible to fly in fast enough to blow it to smithereens—without, that is, Wraith- or Ancient-powered technology. So Sam, who would have been stationed there like all PJs, must have known about its destruction; I’m really not sure how you would hide blowing up almost six hundred square miles of military base without American citizens noticing (especially since they’re already obsessed with it, and flocks of people continually monitor its doings as best they can).
> 
> My teaching semester starts August 20 so...Saturday updates from here on out. Love you all bundles!


	16. Up and Locked

Nothing at all happened on Wednesday, except that John managed to pull a full-court McKay and not sleep for over forty-eight hours, until he crashed so hard it left carpet burn on his face.

He’d taken off from Sam’s condo that morning sometime after three, finally, after so much not-sleeping he’d been afraid it would wake Sam up—everything in his head screaming, him lying there twitching, muscles locked in the effort not to move. Eventually he gave up, slid out of bed and groped around in the darkness for pants and shirt and socks and boots, trying not to make noise, only drawing in one harsh involuntary breath when his jeans scraped up the backs of his thighs.

He made it out to the Camaro without knocking into any furniture, and then drove too fast, windows up, hands clenched around the steering wheel, stomach repeatedly trying to come up through his nostrils. He kept swallowing it back down. He was somewhere strange in his head, somewhere so foggy and alien he managed to get lost twice on the short drive back to his place, which was humiliating as well as annoying; he didn’t stagger in the door until well after five.

He’d stripped off and was halfway to bed when he remembered he’d left without telling Sam, and looked uneasily down at the phone in his lap, unsure whether he should text to be polite and risk waking him—but at stupid o’clock, Sam had already been offering him bacon. _Bacon_. Sam Wilson was a genuine shining unfucked beacon of sanity and humor and kindness, and _breakfast_ , with a slow butter-and-honey voice and a solid right swing he wasn’t afraid to use, and Sheppard knew what he deserved and it wasn’t this. Wasn’t him.

He didn’t text back. Instead he punched his pillow into a wad, curled around it, and lay there staring at the wall until the shadows shifted into patterns of light against the plain beige paint.

What time was it in Atlantis? Had Woolsey worked out a new treaty with the Travelers, now that Katana Labrea was on the Governing Council? Was the electricity actually working in the new livestock barn where he and Stackhouse had tried to wire up lights so Kanaan could do chores after dark? Was Lorne having any luck scouting for a new Alpha Site? Had Zelenka managed to reconfigure the folded-ceramic casing for the ZP3M? He should know these things. His eyes burned as he checked his watch every half-hour, for no reason other than a visceral, adrenaline-laced sense that he was late for something. What the fuck was he doing—he didn’t know why he’d left. But he also couldn’t imagine going back through the gate to Pegasus. It was literally unthinkable; he could only get as far in his mental image as shouldering his duffle and turning toward the event horizon before everything whited out, and instead of the liquid ripple of the wormhole, just a rushing sound.

After hours of this he glazed over at some point, not asleep but at least his body held still, eyes closed, until it was noon and time for PT. Sam had texted again: _Sheppard, goddammit, if you’re dropping, call me._

Was this dropping—was he dropping? He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure he’d been up anywhere high enough to fall down from. Having Sam’s hands on him had been amazing, the way it had every other time, yet at that moment he felt so disconnected from his body he almost couldn’t remember what had happened. He managed: _I’m fine, just couldn’t sleep_ , and Sam seemed to let it go, for the moment.

He drove to DeBakey, nauseated and jittery, and got through PT the way he always did, mostly by focusing on the people scattered around the gym who all seemed way worse off than he was. Given the unremitting severity of his injuries, they had him doing rehab in the amputee unit. It was grimly inspirational, being in there every afternoon with patients around him hard at work, all having to relearn how to walk and touch and move with prostheses. The troops were supposed to pull out by the end of the year but it was too late for these soldiers, left with the reminders of just how badly OEF had gone for everyone involved: combatants, insurgents, uncountable numbers of civilians, long after the Taliban had fallen and John had been yanked out for insubordination. He told himself he should feel lucky, but all he felt was a blank, sick almost-rage, watching as men and women barely out of their teens bit back pain and suffered into new shapes, bodies broken open and remade.

He tried not to think about the IOA tech which could probably help them, and others like them; instead he concentrated on not throwing up, head swimming, and on doing his sets and reps evenly through gritted teeth. He saved his most charming fake smile for the blonde ponytailed kinesiology intern assigned to him that day, and pretended he didn’t hate her for setting the stim so high, fighting not to curse while a young Marine with a new arm did incline flies directly opposite him. Finally it was over and he fled without using their locker room; he wound up sitting in his car in the parking garage and had smoked four cigarettes before he realized he wasn’t moving. There were three new texts from Sam.

 _So why don’t I believe you_ , read the first, then: _We talked about this, Shep, you don’t get to ghost on me_ , ending with _You know I’m not above getting on my bike after work and just coming after you, don’t think I won’t do it._

He sat there for a while long, t-shirt soaked through with sweat in the stifling heat of the car. Finally he typed out: _I’m better, really. Sorry, just been busy with PT._

 _Have you had anything to eat?_ Sam shot back, immediately. _Are you drinking water?_

 _Yes,_ John lied. _Headed for a nap now._

He’d meant to find out what time Sam led his group at the VA, but wasn’t sure why he wanted that information: to go, or to avoid him? Either way. He started the car and headed back east on the 610, feeling vaguely ill from the slick layer of sweat on his skin, the way it never evaporated in the humidity.

Back at his apartment he showered, smoked another couple of cigarettes on the back patio, and finally lay down on the floor instead of the too-short couch to watch Argentina edge out the Netherlands during penalty kicks in the World Cup semifinals, sound turned off, still strung-out and hopped-up on nothing. He couldn’t connect anything he was feeling to what had happened with Sam, except that it had started after they’d gone to bed; but he didn’t know why, only that he kept clenching his teeth and hadn’t wanted to eat all day. Sam texted back, _Okay, but if I find out later you’re lying I’m going to kick your full-bird ass, and I sincerely mean that. Call me when you wake up, I want to hear your voice_.

John wasn’t really sure why he wasn’t drinking, except that it seemed like too much effort to locate alcohol. In another minute, he decided, sprawled on the floor, he would sit up and send Zelenka a real email, and ask about everyone, and check on the projects underway in the city; he’d get caught up on all the details of his former existence, make sure everything he’d walked away from was still there. That it was all happening, life in Atlantis trundling along even without him and McKay there to oversee it or fuck it up or save it at the last millisecond—a line flashed through his head, an old poem from school he didn’t know he knew: _all the untidy activity continues, awful but cheerful._

•

Somehow he’d passed out, lying there in the dark, after having made up his mind to email Radek, and now it was late morning and he had a raw scrape along one cheek from a wrinkle in the carpet. He woke confused, still veiled in a sickening thin sheen of sweat, unable to recall what he’d been dreaming except it had been bad, until he remembered he had fucking therapy at _ten hundred_ , at which point he sat up and volunteered many colorful adjectives about Kaur, and how it had barely been two days since he had last seen her, and what was it with doctors who wanted inside your head, in the Pegasus galaxy you were allowed to shoot at people like that. He had to scramble to make it on time, no shower, barely managing to throw on clean clothes and fling himself back into the car. And then did a little more stunt driving than he should have, especially with no coffee in his system.

 _Pilot’s breakfast_ , he told himself, feeling light-headed and about forty-five degrees off from azimuth. He thumped cigarette ash out the car window and dug an ancient-looking bottle of aspirin out of the glove compartment, at the same time swiping across a full six lanes of fast-moving traffic to exit, and wondered, not for the first time, if someone was tailing him. But traffic was insane even this late after rush hour and he couldn’t tell, just a vague impression of a dark car following a little too closely even for the 610. Where exactly did they think he would go, anyway? He was already nowhere.

With three minutes to spare, Sheppard pulled into the VA parking garage, again, and walked as fast as he could into the hospital, mostly to disguise to himself how badly he was shaking.

In Kaur’s office, John sat down in the same chair as last time, leaning his cane against the arm, with the uneasy sense he’d just been there a few hours ago, which he sort of had been. He still felt prickly, shaky, nauseatingly on edge. Maybe this was in fact exactly how therapy was supposed to feel, but he didn’t like it. It felt like the worst parts of setting the jumper down on a new planet, not knowing whether the population would give you weird booze made out of almost-potatoes or want to sacrifice you to their invariably angry local gods. Only he was doing it alone, without his team.

“Tell me a little about your new friend,” said Kaur, smiling, and it so wasn’t what Sheppard was expecting that it caught him off-guard, and he didn’t have time to freeze up.

“He’s a PJ,” Sheppard said, shocked to find himself talking at all. “Younger than me. Stationed out at Ellington.” Then: “There’s a lot we don’t talk about. Can’t talk about.” Shit, he’d forgotten to call him.

Kaur rolled her pencil between her fingers, thoughtfully. “I can imagine. Trying to share details of a life lived in top secret must feel like…” — _a minefield_ , John thought, but she finished, “…being made out of swiss cheese.”

He nodded. “But we have other, uh—” oh god no, _abort, abort_. “We talk about other stuff.”

Kaur let it go. “And are you still in touch with your friends, colleagues, from your previous post?”

He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them, looking at the photo of Kaur’s tabby but not seeing it. “Yeah. Actually, no. Not really. I can’t…I can’t—” _finish a goddamn sentence, apparently_.

She let that one go, too, tracing her fingertips as if idly across one of the forms he’d filled out. He could see Dave’s name, there, upside down, as next of kin. It had always been Rodney, before.

Kaur had that Teyla-like sideways intuition, though, and kept coming at him from angles, not chasing him down, so that he felt grateful when she didn’t ask about his brother, just threw him another softball. “So, Colonel—how did you wind up in Houston? You don’t have family here, there’s no base…any reason in particular? We’re not known for our wonderful summer climate.”

“Yeah, that’s what O’Neill said. He’s my—uh, emeritus CO, I guess you could say. Anyway, he thought I’d lost my mind.” That was putting it mildly. Jack had been unable to speak for almost a full minute, and then he’d yelled a lot, and threatened to call Carter, and actually tried to call Cam Mitchell. They were both out in the field, but it was still a long time before he gave up and sat back down at his desk, shaking his head in disbelief, and got out the decent Scotch, clearly still baffled.

He’d predicted Sheppard wouldn’t last until August. Maybe he was right.

“Well, in my professional opinion, you are in full possession of your mind,” Kaur said, dryly. “But that still doesn’t tell me why you’re here.”

It made more sense in his head than when he had to explain it, but John tried anyway. “It’s a thing I do, when I don’t really have an opinion.” _When I don’t care what happens to me._ He cleared his throat, a little embarrassed; kept going. “I let something else decide. Open a book, point to a word. Flip a coin; I don’t know. There was a flight map of North America in the hallway outside his office, and I just…” He made an aimless gesture with one finger, circling demonstratively and then pointing.

She laughed, but not at him. “You picked Houston by pointing to a _map?_ You’re lucky you didn’t point to, I don’t know. Beaumont. Port Arthur. The middle of a swamp, or worse.”

“Hey,” he said, mock-offended, “It’s worked out for me really well before. That’s actually how I wound up in—” and then he ground to a halt again.

Kaur didn’t try to get him to finish his sentence, just took off her glasses, leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes, fingers gently steepled. She looked relaxed, and something in him unknotted a little, despite the thousand smaller things he couldn’t talk about and the half-dozen enormous ones. He looked at her bookshelf. A lot of the books had “trauma” or “PTSD” in their titles. He wondered if Sam had read them. _The Body Keeps the Score_ , stated one dark blue spine. He had to agree with that.

“How much does PT help?” Kaur asked, deploying creepy therapist intuition again, eyes still closed. 

Sheppard wasn’t sure what the right answer was, or the truth versus what he was supposed to say. Finally he settled on: “It doesn’t, not really. But you have to do it anyway.”

“Why is that?”

He shrugged. “Could get worse, lose more range of motion. At least this keeps everything where it is now, even if it doesn’t get much better.” And maybe there was still something Carson or Keller could do; they’d promised him they’d keep looking through the databases. He doubted there were magical Ancient recipes for missing kidneys or having half your leg burned off, though. Except for Ascension; and he was just fine with death, thanks anyway.

A wave of tiredness crawled across his skin, and he waited it out. Just dizzy from lack of sleep, that was all. Hard to sleep without drinking. He should probably tell her about the drinking, because he’d been sort of vague about that, in the paperwork. He was such a lightweight that he wasn’t actually consuming that many units, technically; but he knew that wasn’t the point.

Kaur’s eyes snapped open and he thought, dismayed: _she’s not relaxed at all_. It registered with him that he’d been sitting there for a while without saying anything, and she’d been listening intently the whole time.

“So you’re grounded.”

“Not the first time,” he answered, shortly.

“You’ve been injured before?”

“Ate dirt twice,” he said. He left out that he hadn’t physically taken fire either time, just destroyed government property after jinking around like a lunatic trying to avoid it, and fucking up his back by punching out. While he’d also failed to save anyone he’d gone after. “Didn’t exactly file flight plans for those. COs weren’t too happy.”

“Disciplinary hearings?”

He slouched down in his chair a little. “Sure.”

“NJP?”

“Sixty days, both times.” Then he blurted: “Anyway, I deserved it. They could have busted me down.”

Kaur didn’t blink. “But that was in Afghanistan. As a pilot.”

“Sure,” he said again, not much liking where this was going.  
  


“It still doesn’t explain why, this time, you left command.”

 _Command._ What a strange word, for whatever it was he did. He swallowed the flood of saliva that rushed into his mouth; had a momentary flash of leaning on the armory doorframe while Dusty Mehra, now Lorne's 2IC, distributed scavenged Wraith stunners to a group of new Marines who had just qualified for offworld teams, rechecking each one before she handed it over to make sure it didn’t have any fused or melted parts. John was mainly there to watch when they realized the stunners were configured for completely inhuman anatomy, because he thought it was funny, those moments when it would flash across new arrivals’ faces: _holy shit, what the fuck have I gotten myself into._ He thought you could tell a lot from that moment; you could see who met it with misgiving, and whose eyes would suddenly gleam, the same barely suppressed glee that always lit up Rodney’s face when he—

Kaur was looking at him oddly, and Sheppard realized he was standing up. “I’ll just,” he croaked, and beelined for the door. It turned out there was a bathroom right across the hallway from Kaur’s office, which saved him from puking in a trash can, and it also turned out that even if you hadn’t eaten anything in longer than you could remember, there was still something in there. That didn’t seem fair, he thought, resting his face briefly against the brushed metal toilet paper holder, which was cool and solid along his cheekbone. He could feel sweat drying in his hairline. It was gross.

“Colonel Sheppard, I apologize,” Kaur said, getting up from her chair, after he’d washed his face and lurched back to her office. They stood there for a second; he held onto her doorknob, which helped. “I made a clinical error. I shouldn’t have asked you to come back in so soon. That was a mistake, and I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” he said. She looked pretty upset. “You should call me John.”

She handed him a square of paper with scrawled ballpoint writing on it. “I’m going to go ahead and give you a script, because it might help you sleep. It’s for a medication called prazosin, which doesn’t usually have any side effects. It’s a very common prescription for nightmares.”

“I didn’t say I had nightmares,” John felt he had to point out.

Kaur didn’t dignify that with a response, but reached for her phone instead. “May I call your friend to come get you?”

For all he knew, Sam was somewhere in the building. “No, I’m good to drive.”

“I’d really feel better if someone else got you home.”

“Pilot,” he reminded her, but she kept looking upset. John knew that face; Keller made it a lot, especially at first, when she thought she’d screwed something up. She’d smile while her eyes stayed worried.

“All right,” Kaur said, finally. “But please call if anything gets worse. It’s important, Colonel. John.”

Why was his life suddenly lousy with people who wanted him to call them? He nodded, and accepted yet another business card from her, identical to the one she’d already given him.

Before he left the building he did a quick drive-by of the bulletin board where all the various groups were listed: Veteran’s Amputee Support Team (VAST), something called DBT Graduate Skills, several groups for Mindfulness, two for Distress Tolerance (which sounded like SERE training); Art Therapy, Music Therapy, Recreational Therapy; Wheelchair Basketball Tournament—and then there it was: _LGBTQ+ Veterans._ _3rd Thursday of every month, 3-4 pm, Day Room 5A_. _Wilson, Sam, MSW._

It wasn’t meeting today—not until next week. He didn’t know how he felt about that. He thought about calling Sam, for no reason other than Sam had asked, and also maybe to hear his voice, too.

He didn’t call. But he did fill the prescription on the way home.

•

John had barely made through the front door when he’d been waylaid by the voices in his head. Well, _the_ voice, to be more precise. He was going to have to tell Kaur, eventually, about it. About Rodney. Maybe after a couple more weeks, given that he’d just had to flee her office after nearly throwing up in it. He wanted to feel a little more certain that she wasn’t going to slap five-point restraints on him. A psych diagnosis would keep him from ever getting to—

“What, _fly_ again? I thought you both established today, and rather efficiently at that, that you’re permanently grounded, at least in _this_ galaxy,” said Rodney acidly. John had just stepped into the living room, kicking off his shoes. He closed his eyes and let himself down carefully to sit on the floor at the foot of the sofa. Only it was a little more like sliding than sitting, legs straight out in front of him. Lately he’d developed a weirdly intimate relationship with his floor. Maybe because the apartment was carpeted. Even rough and scraggly, it was unlike the cool, slightly soapstone-feeling floors of Atlantis. You could sit on them but they weren’t particularly inviting.

“I kinda hoped we were done with this,” Sheppard admitted, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Rodney laughed, the short angry one that sounded pissed off but was really deeply unhappy. Jesus Christ—when had John learned all of his laughs, and what they each meant? An entire decade’s worth of McKay interpretation.

“What, because you had one-point-five therapy sessions? Or because you finally almost got laid by the handsome sergeant? News flash: that doesn’t make us even, Colonel. Quite the opposite in fact.”

John felt like breaking something. _Now,_ he was pulling this? Rodney was going to be jealous _now?_

“Honestly—you can do linear algebra _and_ partial differentials, you beat me at chess at least a third of the time, how can you possibly be this stupid,” said Rodney, and his voice was outraged. “For the entire first _three_ years of the mission I had an incredibly obvious—as well as atavistic, regressive, _retro_ gressive, quite literally _retarded_ —crush on you. It was so pitiful even Zelenka felt sorry for me.”

He didn’t know what to say. If Rodney was telling the truth, and if John _had_ noticed, which some part of him must have, then he’d put it wherever inside himself he put things that didn’t fit. Things that wouldn’t work, that did no good to think about—Teyla’s mouth opening soft and warm beneath his, Holland bleeding out into the sand.

“And I was just— _me_ , and you were all—with your, your fancy ATA gene, and your _black t-shirts_ , and your preposterous _hands_ , and shooting things, and _saving_ us, and I felt like I was in primary school again, I practically doodled your name onto my notebook with little hearts around it. And I was just this schlubby, prematurely balding nerd who couldn’t make it with a botanist, and you were too busy _Kirking_ your way around the galaxy to even—you never even _noticed,_ Sheppard.”

There was so much in there John didn’t know where to start, which was in fact usually how Rodney won most of their arguments, just by inundating him with sheer volume, leaving John with only the most basic of replies, like smacking him on the back of the head and walking off. He tried to assemble a response that didn’t involve either of those.

“I didn’t _not_ notice,” John retorted, which was weak, but all he had. He uncrossed his arms to stare at his palms, still feeling queasy. “What’s wrong with my hands?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, _nothing’s_ wrong with them you untrammelled moron, they’re actually—wait, you know what: _no_. Ha ha, I get it, very clever—I know what you’re trying to do, and no! No, no, no. I will not be distracted,” said Rodney. Sheppard could practically see him spinning in a small circle as he thought, eyes sparkling, wheeling out of it with that zealous gleam, pointing at John triumphantly.

Fine. _Fine._ John crossed his arms over his chest again and glared at nothing. “Go ahead then. I’m listening.”

“My point is that _you_ , Colonel, are for some reason oblivious.”

“I never said I wasn’t!” John protested.

“You could have tried to be less oblivious!”

“Why is it my fault? Why didn’t _you_ try to be more _obvious!”_

“Oh please, if I’d been any more obvious the entire city would have started taking up a collection. For just the low cost of mere pennies a day, you too can save this poor physicist from his completely unrequited love for the dashing military commander, a pathetic obsession that’s never going to go anywhere.”

“Rodney, that doesn’t even make sense.”

“Yes, well, all I’m saying is that you could have made a little effort to see past the end of your P-90.”

Suddenly John felt more indignant than tired. “And what good would it have done if I _had_ noticed? It was _2004_ , McKay! What were we gonna do, hold hands at the movies? Go steady? In case you don’t remember, _the Wraith were trying to kill us_ and I had just been made _dashing military commander_ of an entire city that kept threatening to explode, or run out of power, or sink underwater, or randomly _fly off into space_ , and by the way you weren’t always the most helpful with _any_ of that!”

McKay went quiet and, goddammit, now John could see his expression: the one that came over his features when John had gone too far, and the defiant sloping mouth had been replaced by the distressed, crestfallen one, the crumpled expression where you could literally watch his eyes cloud over as he clearly began to review every decision he’d ever made, in chronological order, to see exactly where he’d fucked up and how he might still be able to undo it. Rodney always looked so impossibly young and genuinely hurt at those moments it was too easy to imagine him at twenty-four, or fourteen, or four, suddenly stricken with self-doubt and making the same tragic face.

 _I can’t believe this_ , John thought, fighting down hysteria. _I’m about to apologize to thin air._

He cleared his throat, made his voice wheedling and teasing, the way that always worked. His ribcage still hurt from dry-heaving. “Alright, okay—come on, Rodney. I didn’t mean it. You got us out of, what—at least _two_ terrifying disasters, for every three you got us into. Remember how you and Jeannie made the bridge thing? That was pretty cool. And how about that other time—that time you waited for me for, what, forty-eight thousand years? And all the times you repaired the DHD with seconds to spare?”

There was a brief silence. “The bridge was Jeannie’s idea.”

“Okay,” said Sheppard equitably, “but all the other things, they weren’t. They were _your_ ideas. And they worked, and you saved our asses, again and again. From the Genii. From the Wraith. From the Ancients and their crappy failsafes. From the IOA—from _ourselves_.”

Rodney didn’t answer. “Come on, McKay, I don’t even—why should I even have to tell you this? You _know_ how much you meant to…the team. To all of us,” Sheppard ended awkwardly.

There was a long pause. “But how much did I ever mean to you,” Rodney muttered.

Oh God, he couldn’t do this. “You’re my best friend, Arthur,” he said. It was all he could think of.

And waited, a little anxiously, for Rodney to laugh: the low, slightly reluctant, slightly ashamed one, which was oddly enough their cue that now they’d be back to normal. At which point Rodney would roll his eyes, and punch John in the arm, and John would smack him affectionately on the back of the head, and they would stop making eye contact and instead bicker all the way to the mess about whether Teyla and Kanaan’s next kid should have _Meredith_ for a middle name (obviously John thought yes, while Rodney thought _McKay_ would be a good first name for a girl, which was stupid). And Rodney would steal his dessert, which John had pretended to be aggrieved about for a decade but wasn’t actually a sacrifice because John didn’t really like dessert, and everything would be okay.

Instead, there was a rushing, cavernous stillness, and no more voice, inside or outside of his head.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hi there hello so um here _have some angst_ , sorry not sorry, because the next chapter I promise will make it all better...well, a lot of it anyway. Also sorry for skipping a week, the beginning of the semester ate my lunch. Love you madly!


	17. Throttle Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning at the end for a particular consensual but distinctly kinky activity. Take care of yourself!

Sam rarely dropped, but when he did, he dropped hard.

It happened so seldom that he hardly recognized it. But it was definitely happening and it definitely wasn’t good. It was his half-day, he had Friday afternoon off and Sheppard hadn’t called and at this point he was no longer sure what to do with himself. He seemed to be wandering around his apartment looking for a task, so he wound up throwing together laundry and dragging it down to the basement in a mesh bag that thumped against the stairs, hair still damp from a post-gym shower. He felt surly, gritchy, uncomfortable in his own skin. Nothing about this was good.

Sheppard had somehow freaked out anyway, despite whatever reassurance Sam thought he’d given him. He’d peeled off at oh-stupid-thirty, cat-footing it away in the dark, and had texted some bullshit but not called; and sure, he was probably just at PT, or asleep, or, hey, even _busy with his actual life_ , but Sam already felt so possessive, so fucking overprotective, it was like the first part with Riley all over again. It was hot and tangled and confused in his chest, like a goddamn furball of a dogfight, and worst of all he already didn’t want anyone else going anywhere _near_ Sheppard but him. He wanted to tie John up for an entire weekend, hand-feed him, make him cry every few hours, make him ask permission to pee, find out what scared him most and do that over and over again. Why did he always get this way so fast—it wasn’t healthy, it wasn’t doing kink right, to be so jealous, so worried, so desperate to take over.

It wasn’t even doing _dating_ right. Or even just how to be a friend.

The last couple of days had been entirely tainted with it, contaminated by whatever grimy undercurrent of self-doubt ran through his head. It made him short-tempered with his coneheads in the classroom, and later with the Talon trainees, going over how to do a walkaround and pre-flight, and worst of all downright rude to the lead engineer on the EXO-9 project. He’d actually snapped at her that he couldn’t very well give her any additional feedback on the latest design until they _finished building it so he could fucking fly it_ , now could he, and then without another word turned on his heel and walked out—not so much to make a dramatic exit but because he was completely appalled at himself. The entire project team had parted to let him through, big-eyed and thoroughly cowed, mostly because they’d never seen Sam Wilson act so unlike the way his mama brought him up to behave. And now he was going to have to get the engineer a gift basket from Bath & Body Works, to apologize, or did everyone do Lush now. Even his workouts had sucked.

(And there was something in there about Riley; but he wasn’t ready to look at that yet.)

Sam had told John he’d give him names of other doms if he wanted to get more experience, but already found himself mentally going through that list, rejecting every person as inadequate, as not what Sheppard needed. Whereas he was? How could he know that—Sheppard had to decide something like that for himself, and he couldn’t do it if he only knew what it was like with Sam. But even just the thought of John tied up by someone else made him want to mount a rescue mission. The mental image brought such a wave of jaw-clenching territoriality he felt a little unglued by it. And then mad about that. And then on top of everything there was whatever this top-secret something-huge-outside-San-Francisco-Bay business was. And John kept falling off the face of the earth every time Sam let him out of his—

Sam came to and realized he’d been standing in front of the washer in his boxers with the detergent cap in his hand, empty, and he wasn’t sure whether he’d already poured it or had forgotten. He rummaged around gingerly in the dirty clothes until his hand came away sticky and faintly blue; he wiped most of the soap off on a sock and stood there another few minutes.

Maybe he should just stop seeing John, tell him they couldn’t scene anymore for a while. It had only been three times. Shit, no; twice. Twice and a demo. What was _wrong_ with him. But he didn’t want to stop. He wanted Sheppard in his bed, for as long as he’d stay.

 _This is bad_ , he told himself again, circling it warily inside himself—that fraught, almost frenzied feeling. _And you_ know _better, so what are you gonna do about it._

He should find someone else to talk it out with—but who. Sarah (no); Steve (god no); someone here? Jasper? Viola? But none of those people felt right. He thought about various old friends from the DC scene. But there was the classified stuff. Honestly, _Natasha_ was probably the best—

His phone buzzed in the back pocket of his sweatpants. By the time Sam wiped off his hands enough to fumble it out, Sheppard had hung up without leaving a message. Then the screen lit up, as he texted exactly one word: _sorry_.

Sam looked at it for a long time. Sorry I left without saying goodbye? Sorry I didn’t call when you asked me to? Sorry the whole thing happened? It could be any of them, and Sam wasn’t sure he should be chasing this bullshit down. He pressed the knob to start the laundry and slumped against the washer for a second, thinking. Okay, maybe John was one of those people who doesn’t like to talk on the phone. Maybe texting was somehow easier for him. Sam took a breath and wrote:

_I know this is like the worst way to phrase this, but can we talk?_

He tried to tell himself it might even be growth on his part, talking _to_ someone instead of _about_ them. When he’d first dropped with Riley, he’d sealed it off inside himself and that hadn’t helped—in the long run, they would have had to deal with some shit later, after they’d gone home.

For once, John texted back almost instantly. _I knew you’d come to your senses. What’s his name?_

Sam sagged against the washer, unexpectedly relieved. Whatever else was going on, somehow he could mostly count on the guy to have a thoroughly developed sense of the ridiculous, and a pragmatic quality Sam could only attribute to a great many missions gone horribly south.

He looked wryly down at the screen, then answered: _John Sheppard, apparently._

There was a pause, long enough for the washing machine to fill and start agitating. Sam kept leaning against it, soothed by the cool enamelled metal and the slushy sound of its oscillation.

 _that guy? what a loser_  
_I hear he can barely walk and doesn’t answer texts_  
_with a body like yours you could definitely do better_

Sam startled himself by laughing out loud; but then his mouth twisted up in misgiving.

_Yeah, I don’t think so. He ditched me for breakfast the other day and he won’t call me, but I’m kind of into him._

An even longer pause, during which Sam headed up the basement stairs, switching off the light and closing the door behind him, then washed the rest of the detergent off his hands at the kitchen sink, not taking his eyes off the phone on the counter next to him. Sheppard still hadn’t responded, so Sam shook off most of the water, because the dish towel was in the laundry, before he added, _I just don’t want this to go Tango Uniform_.

John had apparently reverted to his more unpunctuated, fluid state.

_do you think that’s what’s happening_

Well, now it was going to get interesting. Sam dried the phone’s face off against his sweatshirt, trying not to press random keys.

_Things are moving a little fast. I think we should probably cool it. Maybe you want to see other doms._

“Come on, Sheppard,” he said out loud to the phone, “I’m trying to do the right thing, here.”

_is it because I fucked up_

Sam bent over the kitchen island and dropped his head on his arms.

_Not exactly. Just, I’m not doing too great myself._

He paused, then forced himself to type it all out: _I’m feeling kind of intense and possessive and shit. And it doesn’t seem fair to ask you to be exclusive, since you just started out. Honestly, seems like you might be pushing yourself._

“Also I’m putting off asking you where you really spent the last ten years,” he said aloud, staring at the front of the fridge, which had nothing on it but a VA magnet and a takeout menu for Thai.

The overprotective part of him needed to make sure Sheppard didn’t just _let_ him do what he wanted but gave informed consent—and how could he do that, if hadn’t scened with anyone but Sam? On the other hand, how patronizing was it to tell an officer and a combat veteran that he didn’t know what he wanted; couldn’t possibly know. John was a grown-ass adult, albeit a fucked-up one.

While Sam wrestled with his conscience, Sheppard was apparently writing a novel, or, given all the line breaks, an epic poem; Sam looked up at the chorus of beeps to find he actually had to scroll down to read everything John had sent. He’d clearly completely given up on apostrophes.

 _look I know I dont talk_  
_and thats a total pain in the ass_  
_anyway thats what they tell me_  
_and I know I fucked up the last couple of days_

 _also youre right I dont know anything about_  
_about whatever this is_

 _but heres the deal_  
_Im actually divorced_  
_its_  
_we just_

_werent a good fit for a lot of reasons_

Sam wasn’t sure if he was supposed to say anything back at this point or just let John keep going. He took a chance and waited, and then another flood of bad poetry appeared.

 _fuck this is long_  
_listen all Im trying to say here is you dont have to worry about me_  
_its actually not my first rodeo_

 _yeah sure I can be impulsive_  
_and make shitty decisions_  
_Im a jock for fucks sake_

_but what_

_what if I just want you_

Jesus Christ. Heat coursed through him, and when Sam’s phone rang, he didn’t even switch over to see who it was before taking the call. “My thumbs hurt,” complained John, voice scratchy.

“That’s what she said,” returned Sam automatically.

“Why the hell would she say that? ” John said, with his worst laugh, the one that sounded like pine boards being sawed lengthwise. Sam shook his head, wondering why he was so into this guy.

“Use your imagination, Sheppard.”

“Yeah, well…I have been,” and abruptly John’s voice went about an octave lower, which wasn’t fair and also wasn’t the way Sam wanted this to be going.

“Are you really okay?”

“I wasn’t,” Sheppard admitted, after a pause. “But I got some sleep last night, and today’s better.”

“I’m just trying to be smart here, okay,” Sam said, summoning all his don’t-bullshit-me-Rogers technical-sergeant sternness. “One of us has to be, and it’s clearly not gonna be you.”

“And it’s smart—what, for me to go get frisky with someone I don’t like?”

“Did you really just say _get frisky?”_

“Not the point, Wilson.”

Sam opened his mouth to respond with something crisp and curt and sensible, but nothing came out, so John continued talking, because apparently once he finally got started he just kept going.

“I know I haven’t—read all the books, or websites, and I don’t know what you think I should do, go play the field in a ball gag and a mesh thong before I decide to…grow old with you or whatever.” John paused for a second, but only to draw breath. “And I know I, what do you call it. _Ghosted_ you again. But I’m trying to do better. It’s just, things are weird in my world, Sam. Really unimaginably weird, like you can’t even—and I have to go back, at some point, because there’s people who need me. And I don’t know how long I—so can we just. Can I just have this.”

His voice dropped on the last word. Something inside Sam that had been stuck came loose.

“It’s—yes. Of course you can.”

Sheppard’s drawl was back, and Sam felt another surge of relief. “Good, because I just bought lube from a teenaged girl at CVS and I don’t want to have gone through that for nothing.”

Sam laughed, though he sort of felt like crying. “It’s way worse when it’s, like, a mom.”

“Is there any _good_ demographic for public purchases of sex stuff?”

“This is why people use Amazon, Shep.”

“We couldn’t…do that, where I was.” Right.

“Well, while you’re stateside please enjoy all our mod cons, including discreetly packaged erotic aids delivered to your doorstep.”

“Does Amazon even sell books anymore?”

“Why, you want recommendations?”

Sheppard was quiet for a second. “Not really. I know I’m supposed to read a bunch of stuff, it’s just not how I pick things up. Even in grad school. I’ve always tended to be more hands-on.”

“Slow reader, is what you’re saying.” It was too easy to tease John, instead of admitting to himself that he could feel his own pulse slow and heavy in his throat and wrists, mouth dry, whole body aching with want.

Instead, what Sheppard said next made Sam have to bite down on his lower lip. “Sam? The last couple of days have been hell. Can you just—can you just come the fuck over?”

Downstairs he heard the washer click over into the spin cycle, whirring faster and faster. He shut his eyes briefly, thought about his duffel bag. (A mesh thong? _A ball gag.)_

“Yeah. Yeah, I can absolutely do that.”

•

The Kawasaki had many advantages, most of them related to getting places quickly when Sam couldn’t reasonably fly; currently shooting to the top of the list of its virtues, however, was the look on Sheppard’s face when Sam pulled into one of the apartment complex’s parking spaces.

He kicked down the stand, swung his leg over the back of the bike and swiped a few raindrops off the sleeves of his leather jacket. It hadn’t rained much, just enough to make the roads slick, and to slow him down not nearly as much as it should have. John eyed the duffel bag but said nothing.

“You ride?” Sam asked, falling into step beside him on the sidewalk as Sheppard led them into the complex via some circuitous route. He was wearing the usual faded black t-shirt and mysterious gray BDUs, but his boots weren’t laced and his hair was wet and less of a wreck than usual, as if he’d tried to comb it down flat. He’d clearly just showered and Sam thought about how his skin must taste: cool, soap-clean, water-sweet.

“Not anymore,” said Sheppard, not bothering to gesture toward his leg. “Had a Ducati when I was too young and dumb to take care of it. Then an old Honda CB750, for years.”

Sam looked at him with grudging respect. “A Nighthawk? Guess money doesn’t entirely cancel out good taste.”

Sheppard shrugged and steered them left. “Money was Dad’s, not mine. More of a pain in the ass than anything else—the bikes were pretty much compensation for putting up with the rest.”

 _So daddy issues, on top of everything else_. Although that was pretty standard when it came to career pilots.

The complex was anonymous and prefabricated-looking, all poorly pruned box shrubs and flaky brick veneer. Sam could see how it had appealed to Sheppard, as if he were hoping to camouflage himself in its shabby blandness. But it wasn’t working, or anyway Sam could see through it. John didn’t belong here. Sam wasn’t sure where he did belong, but an apartment complex in Houston exurbia definitely wasn’t it. He stood out almost as badly here as he had at Numbers, like a well-oiled Ka-Bar in a drawerful of butter knives.

From the corner of his eye Sam stole glimpses at him: even injured, he was still rangy and athletic, but also slender, and breakable-looking; and god help him Sam wanted to be the one to break him. Not a lot, just a little. Just enough. Just enough to see the gleam, the tang, the edge. Enough to figure out where he was really meant to be, who he was when he wasn’t wedded to his suffering.

Sheppard pulled out a heart-shaped keychain and opened one of the identical front doors, showing Sam into a completely unremarkable apartment, beige and square. Impossible to tell when it was built; probably about as durable as an umbrella in a hurricane. It was almost sunset outside but still over ninety degrees, not counting humidity, and the air conditioning felt, as it always did, like mercy.

John dropped the keys onto a hallway table and turned to ask Sam something; but Sam never found out what it was because Sheppard’s lips were parted, with that spot of red high on his cheekbones, and without thinking Sam dropped the duffle and basically rush-tackled him down onto the sofa.

“Leg,” said Sheppard, with difficulty, because Sam was peeling his black t-shirt off over his head.

“I got you,” Sam said into the hollow of his throat, which was his new favorite place, and flipped them gently onto their sides, which gave him better access to John’s chest anyway.

A few twisting pinches and John had thrown his head back, tender skin of his neck exposed, hips already moving. Sam dragged his dog tags out of the way and lowered his head to bite at a flushed nipple, raising it to a pebbled nub with the wet point of his tongue. Finally having Sheppard under his hands again was a palpable satisfaction, the exact solace he’d been craving for hours. It was hard to remember his concern this might be happening too fast when he felt so flush and triumphant, like he’d held a winning hand the whole time, and when _Area 51_ seemed to have stopped ringing in his brain like an alarm bell. He was also starting to think Sheppard was something of a pillow princess, which was actually kind of fucking adorable if in clear need of retraining.

But he hadn’t even started to have that thought properly when John buried his face in Sam’s shoulder, hands clutching fistfuls of his jacket. Sam paused, let Sheppard cling to him and stroked the greying cropped hair at the nape of his neck, trying to intuit how best to start their crazy shit into motion, especially the part where at some point he asked John to level with him. But something was going on with the guy; plus there was also the part where his mouth watered, he wanted so badly to mark up John’s neck with purple bruises; but just because Sheppard had put _marks_ on the list, that didn’t mean he’d been thinking about the kind that would show, so it wasn’t really fair to—

“I had fucking therapy,” John said, muffled against him, and Sam dropped his train of thought completely. Instead he let out a low whistle and put his arms all the way around Sheppard, kissing the bare skin of his bony shoulder.

“Way you say it, sounds like a real crowd pleaser.”

Sheppard snorted, but didn’t respond. Sam let himself use some teeth, scraped a delicate bite against the thin skin of John’s throat, down low, and felt him inhale quietly, stomach moving against Sam’s.

He backed off a little, brushed his lips against John’s temple. “Is that why you left, Tuesday night?”

“No, I just couldn’t sleep. But then I—kept not being able to sleep.”

Sam could only imagine what an understatement that was. “You said you got a few hours last night.”

“Yeah, the doctor gave me a prescription. I think it’s helping.” He shifted a little and pressed his face into the side of Sam’s neck. “And I finally kept something down. And drank water, before you ask. Because for some reason you’re obsessed with hydration.”

“Hey, I’m a goddamn medic,” Sam answered, mouth on autopilot while he covertly checked out the room. Living room pre-furnished with the usual off-base room-in-a-box stuff, mostly dull brown and scuffed; a plastic tumbler on the kitchen counter with the Stanford Cardinals logo on it, an amber prescription bottle, a can of Pringles, a half-full two-liter bottle of Canada Dry, some crumpled foil wrappers, what looked like the broken halves of a laptop, and a tall, messy stack of legal pads and notebooks, creased and stuffed with post-it notes and torn-out pages. He wondered what constituted food in John’s estimation. “What’d they give you, Ambien?”

He felt John shake his head. “No, it starts with a P. I don’t remember—I had to leave. I sort of…took off before we were really done talking.”

Not just an averagely shitty session, then: something had happened. He wondered who John was seeing. Hopefully someone who knew what the fuck they were doing. “First visit?”

“Second.” Sheppard sounded so miserable that Sam’s arms tightened around him involuntarily, but he pitched his voice to be light, a little flippant.

“I’d tell you how proud I am of you for going, but unless you’re somehow no longer John Sheppard, my guess is you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Not much,” admitted John. As if to demonstrate this, he twisted his neck to the side to offer Sam better access, which made saliva pool in Sam’s mouth and blood rush to places that it shouldn’t.

“Jesus, you’re a brat. Are you for real right now?”

John looked at him sidelong through his eyelashes, all guile, and Sam could see how ridiculously pretty he must have been when he was younger. It crashed through him again, that _feeling_ , whatever it was, flaring up in his chest almost angry. He rocked forward a little, experimentally, mouthing at John’s trapezius, and bit down harder this time until his sharp inhalation was audible. Sam needed out of these jeans, like, ten minutes ago. “Okay, what if I let you get away with this, for once. Say we take your mind off things. _Temporarily._ We’re still talking about this, later.”

“See, that’s what I was thinking,” Sheppard said, sounding wily, hooking his top leg over Sam’s and pulling Sam’s hips closer against his own. “It’s good field strategy: create a distraction. Mount a counteroffensive. But without so many clothes. Maybe in a bed.”

Oh God, seriously? Somehow he was supposed to keep his head with Sheppard’s sinewy, lean thigh already insinuating itself between his and pressing cautiously but unerringly upward, the muscles of his chest shifting beneath his warm skin, liquid against Sam’s lips. What had Sam been saying, about orgasms not being important? Why the fuck had he said that?

He literally had nothing planned, no scene, no anything, just the need to get his own pants off and try to make John scream. More than one way to accomplish both of these, but first—

“Yeah, okay. Fuck it. We can totally make this happen. Now, with a hundred percent more bed,” he announced, standing abruptly and hauling John into an easy lift-and-carry in the same movement. He might be a couple inches over six feet but didn’t weigh much, probably not even a dollar seventy.

Sam counted it both a huge success and somewhat worrying that Sheppard didn’t struggle, only flopped down over his shoulders, and laughed when Sam kicked open the bedroom door.

“Fucking PJs. You guys are worse than drivers, always hotdogging,” he said into Sam’s neck, and Sam shrugged him down and set him deliberately on the edge of the bed, careful of his injuries. He squatted easily and pulled off both Sheppard’s unlaced boots; then his socks, fingers briefly encircling his skinny ankles; and finally, straightening up, the BDUs, unzipping them and sliding them down to find that John hadn’t bothered to put on boxers after his shower, and was looking kind of inordinately smug about that. Sam fought down the immediate urge to get his mouth all over him _(soap-clean, water-sweet)_ and instead reached around behind him and dug his fingers deliberately into the bruises he knew were still there, just for the pleasure of hearing Sheppard stifle a yelp, and try to squirm away. John had to do something to earn being touched, after all.

Sam straightened up, throwing off the leather jacket and starting to unbutton his work shirt, which for some stupid reason he’d put back on after the gym. “Listen, I’ve done so many drops I’ve lost count—” (not true: it was somewhere around a hundred and seventy, maybe eighty, except exactly none of them had been drops, in the technical sense) “—and before that I spent a few million hours guppying in the goddamned Pool, so I think I’ve earned it.” He pulled his undershirt off over his head, and then, after an instant’s hesitation that was barely (he hoped) visible, flicked his belt buckle open and stepped in between Sheppard’s spread legs. “Go on.”

Sheppard looked up at him, eyes smouldering, clearly biting back something smart-mouthed. “Yes, Sam.”

 _Jesus Christ_ , how did he _do_ that, make his _name_ sound like a fucking— “Just get them off,” he rasped, and John did, unbuttoning and unzipping while Sam stepped out of his shoes. John didn’t quite get the jeans all the way down before he leaned forward and shamelessly pressed his mouth against Sam’s erection through his gray knit boxer-briefs, sucking him through the fabric like he couldn’t stand to wait, holding Sam’s hips still, nose pressed into the arrow of fine hair below his stomach. His mouth was hot and aggressive and unexpectedly fearless, and Sam’s eyelids fluttered shut; he put a hand firmly around the back of Sheppard’s neck, not letting him pull away. John tried, but only once, not very convincingly, and Sam knew he’d only done it to feel the resistance because he immediately put his mouth back on the damp cotton, making a low sound in his throat and running his tongue up and down Sam’s already-aching length, leaving behind a dark wet patch when Sam finally shoved him backward onto the bed with one hand, kicking out of his boxers and pretty sure he was about to convert Sheppard from princess into cockslut in a few simple steps.

He knelt above him for a second, thought about rolling them over; thought about John’s hip and knee, then almost stopped thinking when John’s hand closed around him, curious but completely firm, not a trace of uncertainty, his other hand slipping lower to cup his balls, and this wasn’t—

“Are you sure you haven’t ever, _shit_ ,”—because John brought his hand up to his mouth, and licked it thoroughly, like he knew what he was doing, which, come to think of it he probably did; and curled it around Sam’s cock again, thumb circling the underside of the head, long fingers gripping and then pulling, finding a rhythm and it was a good sturdy solid one, the kind that made Sam’s hips want to rock into it, and okay, _no_ , he reached down to still John’s movement while he still was able to do so.

Sam kept his fingers clamped tightly around John’s wrist, shifting his weight over him and shaking his head a little to clear it. “You’re…actually not bad at that.”

John scowled at him, trying to tug his hand free, rotating his wrist futilely. “I have one, you have one, it’s not string theory. And if you’d _let_ me, I could—”

“I know you could. But that’s not what I want.” How had Sam not kissed him yet? He bent to open John’s mouth beneath his, curling his tongue against John’s palate just to hear him make that sound, to remind him; then pulled away, licking his lips to chase the taste. “Your bed; still my rules. Deal?”

John nodded, then visibly remembered. “Yes, Sam.”

This time Sam had to close his eyes. _Why are you undoing me like this._

Sheppard kept trying to pull away his hand, but now in the opposite direction. Sam let go to see what would happen, and John raised both arms over his head and pressed his hands back into the mattress, looking at Sam with an expression Sam hadn’t seen before: still defiant, somehow, but for the first time with a bare, stripped-away clarity that stole his breath.

Before, what they’d done had been about sensation: about restriction, about pain. This was unmistakably submission, and it was different and _John had started it_ and it was intoxicating. Sam felt blood singing in his veins, ringing in his ears.

“Look how good you are,” he murmured, stroking John’s stomach just to make it tremble and clench, his body stretched out unresisting, breathless, barely hanging onto self-control. “How good can you be? Do you want to show me?”

A bolt of pure anguish flashed through Sheppard’s eyes but he didn’t move, this time didn’t even turn his face away, and everything was so much sweeter for the fact that it was costing him. Sam cupped his chin and kissed him as a reward, deep and thorough, pulling back just to say, roughly, unable to keep from biting at his mouth, “This isn’t easy for you and _you do it anyway_ and you have no idea how much that turns me on, you trying so hard to give it up. It’s beautiful, you’re beautiful.”

“I think I need a word,” gasped Sheppard.

“Good,” said Sam, kneeling up to straddle his chest, then his shoulders, deliberately telegraphing where he was headed, Sheppard’s whole body tensed beneath him. His hands kept trying to come up off the sheets, so Sam leaned his weight forward onto John’s wrists, making it easier for him to stay still. “Something you wouldn’t say in bed, something that takes you out of this.”

He watched John’s face wrestle transparently with a dozen emotions at once, shame and anger and unalloyed terror; and Sam felt that same swooping soaring sense of power he only ever felt doing one other thing.

“Whiskey Delta,” Sheppard offered, finally.

“Too long. And it shouldn’t sound like anything else you might need to say. Like _stop,_ or _no._ ”

“Jesus Christ, fine— _queen_ , okay,” he bit out, thrashing, unable now to keep from struggling against Sam’s weight, but Sam knew it was okay; it wasn’t a let-me-go kind of resistance, but the hold-me-down kind. And Sam could do that for him.

“Queen,” he repeated, shifting his hips forward. He wasn’t going to ask what it meant. “Are you saying it now?”

“No, just—”

“Do I need to tie you up?”

“No, I can—I can be—”

“Good? You can be good?” That ripple of pain again, as Sheppard fought with himself. God, it was pretty. Sam wanted to drink it like rainwater. He was going to praise John until he passed out from it. “You’re already being good, beautiful. Give me one of your hands.”

“Why,” said Sheppard, confused, trying to pull it away and put it back above his head.

“Here,” Sam said, pressing John’s fingers into the most sensitive curve of his waist, making sure he left his hand there when Sam pulled his own away. “You won’t be able to talk, so tap me if you need to breathe or stop.”

Sheppard went still. _“Oh god_ , no—”

Sam scanned his face, making sure. “Are you saying your safeword?”

“No, but I’ve never, I don’t—”

“You do now.”

“No, Sam—stop, I can’t—”

“Yeah, beautiful, this is happening.”

“No,” said Sheppard, eyes wild.

“Yes,” said Sam, and pressed the head of his cock into John’s half-open mouth.

Sam had been right; Sheppard was made to do this, and he told him as much, touching him, stroking his temple, the side of his neck, studying the miracle of John’s face as he swiftly worked out what went where: how to breathe through his nose, how to drop his jaw, how to cup his tongue and drag it along the underside, how to hollow his cheeks and pull Sam down into him, first the back of his mouth, and then, very carefully, the first hot suck of his throat. Sam didn’t let go, didn’t thrust, just held Sheppard’s head still and watched his eyes because they were open and clear and gave away everything: that split second when panic flared and then faded, and yielded to his underlying need, and then melted into outright lust, and at that point Sam groaned and finally had to prop himself up against the wall above the bed with one arm, because John had worked his other hand free only so that he could reach up and grab Sam’s thigh and urge him deeper, and, okay, this was—this was—that hadn’t—

“ _Fuck_ , you’re too—I need to move,” and _shit_ , this hadn’t been in the plan but was there even really a plan, Sam dimly remembered leaving the bag with all of his rope by the front door; and something about Peterson AFB was important, and San Francisco Bay, but John just made an inarticulate frustrated sound and swallowed for the first time, and everything went white behind Sam’s eyelids.

When he could see again he was curled over Sheppard, thighs pressing down his shoulders and both hands on his face, helplessly thrusting, as shallowly as he could stand to, and John had obediently kept one hand on Sam’s waist but had clearly started jerking off with the other, hips arched up off the bed, face flushed and desperate. He hadn’t told John to touch himself but hey, positive reinforcement, and also it was hot as hell. Sam ground his back teeth together to keep from going too deep but it was a losing battle, with John now making noise around Sam’s cock that vibrated all the way into his pelvis.

“Oh god, do you even know what you’re doing, I don’t want to—” _hurt you_ , but also he did—fuck, this wasn’t a _scene,_ they were just—

Sheppard made a kind of muffled snarl and let go of himself long enough to shift one of Sam’s hands up to his hair. Sam clenched his fingers automatically and tightened them against John’s scalp hard enough to sting, which was apparently what John needed because his arm started moving faster, and Sam felt his own stomach muscles tighten, knees locked on either side of John’s ribcage.

“The fucking _mouth_ on you—are you trying to make me come, is that it?” If John wanted pain to get there, Sam could give it to him. He kept one hand buried in Sheppard’s hair and with the other slapped him, not lightly—twice, three times—crisp stinging swats that he felt the echo of through John’s cheek, and he rested his palm there for a moment, to feel himself moving inside him, too.

John lost his rhythm and let go for a second, sucking down air, coughing, and then lunged for him again, lips swollen, Sam’s cock slick with saliva and slipping back in easily, and Sam slapped him once more, this time a little harder, just to feel John’s arm moving even faster, and whatever Sam had been planning to do next was lost in the soft heat and unbelievably sweet taut pressure of his _mouth_ —

“Fuck yes, beautiful—you’re _so fucking good_ —” was as far as he got before he couldn’t stand it, he had to come too badly, he pulled out and got a hand around himself, finally, the hard fast strokes he needed, Sheppard making a forlorn sound of protest and chasing after him with his mouth, but Sam just held him down by his hair and moved faster, hand a blur, twisting his thumb up over the spit-wet head until everything drew up beneath him, John’s fingers wringing at the skin of his waist, and he bit his lip against the shout, shuddered, and came in hot white pulses all over John’s throat, John writhing and thrusting beneath him, red-mouthed and tear-streaked and gorgeous.

Distantly he felt warmth hit the back of his thigh, stray wetness striping the skin, but at that moment he was too focused on John’s eyes, all but forgetting his own orgasm as he watched the dark pupil dilate against the bright curve of iris, pinpointing the exact fraction of a second when John came, when rationality and identity left him, dropped away, and for an instant he was pure sensation, rising and limitless and—

“Perfect,” Sam whispered, and somehow swung his weight to one side before collapsing.

He never really grayed out, that was sort of a point of pride with him (if pulling 9 Gs didn’t do it, mere ejaculating wasn’t going to); but after a minute he came around flat on his back, with John’s head resting on his stomach, something cold and unpleasant liquefying between them and trickling off his skin into the sheets. “This doesn’t happen,” he said muzzily, trying to lift his head and at the same time move them both out of what was rapidly becoming the wet spot. Sheppard sat up with a lurch and dipped off the side of the bed, coming back with a pair of boxers, wiping off his own neck and chest, and then as much of Sam as he could reach before falling back into the sheets, mumbling something whose verb Sam couldn’t quite catch, about CVS and conceited toppy parajumpers. Sam didn’t care; the room was cool and dim and he was completely comfortable, boneless and content.

“Hey,” he said, after a minute, feeling around for Sheppard’s hand. He caught it and pulled it up to his lips and held it there a moment, not really caring if that embarrassed John or not.

Apparently it didn’t, because he felt bony shins knocking against his, and then Sheppard’s head melted into the dip between Sam’s arm and shoulder, and he sighed, and Sam drew him closer and forgot he was supposed to stay awake. Much less bring Sheppard water for his throat; much less ask probing questions to which neither of them particularly wanted to hear the answers.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Sheppard vigorously protests an activity, but doesn't safeword. To me as a kinky person the whole point of _having_ a safeword is precisely so that one can thusly protest, because sometimes one just needs to plead desperately with one's top; however, I can imagine this could be triggery to some readers. So, caveat lector!
> 
> Also, you're awesome and I love you. Next week: revelations...?


	18. State

Sheppard came around when Sam gently rolled him to one side, and lay there blinking, trying to get his bearings in the dark, until Sam came back from the bathroom and handed him a coffee cup filled with tap water.

“That’s my shaving mug,” said John, but he sat up and drank the water anyway, making a face. It actually only tasted a little soapy, and he was thirsty.

“You okay?” Sam asked.

John handed the mug back to Sam, in case he wanted to get his own. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

He could hear a frown in Sam’s voice. “Come on, Shep. I’m just checking in.”

John thought he knew why. “Because that wasn’t a scene.”

“It wasn’t _not_ a scene.” Sam cleared his throat. “You submitted. You could have safeworded, or tapped out.”

“But we had sex.”

“Yeah, we did. Thus the checking-in. How do you feel about that?” Sam brushed Sheppard’s hair off his forehead in a movement that had started to feel like a habit. John fought not to like it as much as he already did.

“What do you mean, how do I feel about it? I feel like I just had sex.”

“Yeah, but. A lot of asexual people find it, for lack of a better word, unpleasant.”

“Did it seem like I found it unpleasant?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you pushed yourself. Maybe something that felt okay in the moment doesn’t feel okay afterward.” Sam’s hand was still in his hair and John kept his eyes closed.

“No, it’s fine.” John fell quiet for a second, unsure of how to convince him. “I’m, how do I put this.” He reached up for Sam’s hand, then moved it down against his throat, where Sam would be able to feel his pulse pound in his veins, still rocketing. “I haven’t even recovered from that and I pretty much already want to do it again.”

Sam made a sound John couldn’t interpret, then shifted to kiss him, hand briefly squeezing his neck. “I’ll be right back. You need more water.”

Sheppard couldn’t really move anyway, because he felt like someone had cut all of his strings, so he listened to Sam crashing around in his apartment until a light went on in the kitchen. Sam returned with a pill and a half-gallon plastic bottle of orange juice, unceremoniously shoving them both at John before flopping back down onto his side of the bed. “There’s literally nothing in your fridge,” he said.

As a matter of fact there was a great deal of IPA in John’s fridge; but he took Sam’s point, and accepted the juice instead. He peered at the label; HIGH PULP, it read, which, if he remembered correctly, made it more like eating an orange than drinking juice. He had no memory of buying it and hoped it wasn’t fermented. “I don’t get a glass?”

Sam, arm thrown over his face, didn’t move. “What are you now, a princess?”

“Maybe,” said Sheppard, before downing the pill and then polishing off most of the juice, which did taste sort of fuzzy. Sam was still glowing with sweat, and to be fair he had just exerted himself quite a bit. John tapped his arm with the bottle, inquiringly; Sam shook his head, so John shrugged and finished it. He flipped over onto his stomach, then stuck a pillow up underneath his chest so he could prop his head on both fists and stare pointedly at Sam in the half-light from the kitchen.

Staring had always worked with Rodney. Eventually Sam pulled his arm away and rolled over to face him with a barely smothered yawn. “Can’t sleep?”

“I nearly _was_ asleep, until someone threw drugs and a bottle of juice at my head.”

“If I throw something at you, Shep, you’ll know it,” Sam retorted, but he was smiling.

John felt weirdly relaxed and loose-jointed, like nothing mattered. Maybe trying to talk to Kaur, as badly as it had gone, was still the right thing to do. Definitely asking Sam to come over had been. He (and maybe also Sam) kept half-expecting freakouts which never came, either about sex or the fact that he’d just had it with another guy. Instead he felt something he really wasn’t used to, something uncomfortably close to contentment, with Sam in his bed, nearby and warm, like it was nothing. He guessed, as if from a great distance, that if he did start freaking out about anything, it was probably going to be that.

“So therapy was more fun than you could stand, huh?” Sam asked. He moved to slide under the sheet and lifted a corner for John to do the same, then ran his palm in long soothing strokes down John’s back, slow touches that made his eyes shut again.

“Meter completely pegged,” John acknowledged tightly. But he could already feel himself letting go, joints unlocking and releasing him down into the mattress still further. Sam’s hand felt like it was made of sheer grace; behind his eyelids John saw coruscating constellations and the luminous ripple of the wormhole, fluid and blue. “I don’t even remember most of it.”

The stroking didn’t pause. “Memory’s a pretty strange part of the brain, Shep. Most of us have gaps, lost time, that kind of thing. When you’re under certain kinds of stress, like, the insanely high kind, that’s the part of your brain that shuts down first—the part that handles language and memory. So it’s not unusual to forget conversations, certain places, even whole missions.”

“You too?” said John, struggling to open his eyes so he could see Sam’s face.

“For a while,” Sam said, shifting closer to John so he could use both hands. “Till I did a shit ton of therapy, remembered some stuff. Got okay with not remembering the other stuff.”

John nodded, then stifled a moan when Sam slid on top of him and dug his thumbs into Sheppard’s shoulders. He never talked about it, but his entire upper back had pretty much been in a chronic spasm since well before Atlantis, thanks to the repeated neck injuries that had eventually thrown his cervical spine out of whack (plus Todd’s last little parting shot: tossing him across a hiveship so hard that Sheppard had rung his own bell against a cartilaginous console, managing to concuss himself, chip two vertebrae, and make Carson shake his head and say shockingly bad words under his breath).

Lately, earthside, the pain had been worse; he was basically made of knots, but Sam seemed to know how to untie them. “It’s not fair,” he said aloud; Sam just massaged the back of his neck, thumbs pressed lightly against the base of his skull.

“Not the first vet I’ve heard say that. It might not be fair but it’s self-protective. You gotta think that any shit you don’t remember? Is probably something you forgot for a good reason.”

“But I remember everything,” John said without thinking. Sam had moved down his neck and started to smooth his palms down the long muscles on either side of his spine, and it felt so good John wondered if he was going to start crying, or maybe have another orgasm.

“Yeah? You wanna share with the group?” Sam asked. He scooted off John onto one elbow, but kept a hand curved around John’s neck. Somehow that touch made things seem possible, in the semi-dark, that weren’t actually possible. It was proprietary, aggressive, strangely consoling.

“He talks to me,” John blurted out. “I can’t stop hearing him.”

Sam stretched out on his back, but his hand stayed put. “Sounds about right.”

“How can there be anything right about it? He’s _dead.”_

Sam went silent for a minute; John could hear him stroking his moustache and thinking.

“Not to you, he’s not,” he finally said.

(There hadn’t been a body. For several days off and on, through the pain and sedation, John had kept grabbing Carson or Keller or various terrified nurses by the arm, shouting and slurring his words: _he’s_ in _there, his energy signature is still there, don’t you understand, it’s imprinted in the memory buffer, there’s a pattern on the receiving end, wherever the gate dialed that’s where he is, he’s not gone, you just need to figure out where the gate dialed and you’ll find him, just reintegrate the pattern, for god’s sake leave the iris up and don’t engage the wormhole until then, repeat,_ do not engage _, goddammit, that’s an order_ , half out of his mind, crosseyed and stoned on morphine and urgent—not knowing that Zelenka and Carter had been working without sleeping to try to find the signature; futilely, of course, because it had been an accident and the gate hadn’t actually dialled anywhere, not anywhere they could find. So in the end, there hadn’t been a body, Sheppard would have been a pallbearer but they didn’t have his _body—)_

John reached out blindly, encountering the curve of Sam’s close-cropped head, and cupped it, tentatively, somehow not sure if that was allowed. But Sam reached up and covered John’s hand with his own, threaded their fingers together in his quiet this-isn’t-a-big-deal way, the one that shredded something in John’s chest, made him want to admit the inadmissable.

“I loved him,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Sam, nodding. “You still do.”

“Will you fuck me?” John whispered.

Sam turned onto his side, took John’s face in his hands, and kissed him, mouth firm and warm, tongue silky against his, promise blooming between them. “No. Not yet, beautiful. But soon.”

•

John woke again in the middle of the night, slick with sweat from a dream in which Holland, bloodied and skeletally thin, and Nancy had both been shouting at him, demanding answers John didn’t have even in his sleep. He peeled himself slow inch by inch from Sam’s side and lay motionless, curled around his pillow; watched car lights move across the wall and thought about how most people somehow managed to fall asleep and stay that way every night in some kind of mysterious natural way, without bourbon.

Eventually he got up and went outside to pace on the patio. He thought vaguely about smoking, the rough burn and crackle of paper, but somehow the bitterness of a cigarette wasn’t what he wanted. Above the fenceline, the sodium lights of the parking lot had blurry halos of humidity around them. In the smudged orange light he could see quite a few giant roaches as they bumbled their way around each other; he hadn’t realized they could fly that high, which was a little unnerving.

The silence wasn’t oppressive, though; the lights buzzed quietly and even in the middle of the night there was the distant slushy sound of traffic. It wasn’t anything like it had been the other night, alone, in the gape of Rodney’s departure, a total silence that had stretched on and on inside his apartment, that had filled his ears in an instant, like an all-engulfing, all-encompassing desert wind. It was utterly soundless, yet immediately took up all the space for long minute after minute, muting every other noise, soaking up every decibel of ambient sound until the silence made John’s ears ring. And still it had stretched on and on, into an hour, and another hour, until he’d gone into the bedroom for his headphones and played My Bloody Valentine, then Nirvana, then Wu-Tang, then Rage Against the Machine, and then, desperate, Motörhead, as loudly as possible to drown it out, to crowd out the deafening absence. He’d stayed cramped up on the floor at one end of the sofa, gutting it out, waiting for something to change or be better or even just stop, eyes dry, head throbbing, but determined not to drink. He didn’t even know what alcohol would do if combined with Kaur’s prescription; but he was a shitty drunk anyway, and he was going to ride it out if it killed him. At some point, he’d thrown the headphones across the room and crawled into bed.

_Not to you, he’s not. You still do._

When he came back inside, he drank from the kitchen tap for a long time, letting the water turn cold, not sure why his throat hurt until he remembered and felt a rush of prickling heat all over his body, and stood there dazed like he'd just been punched, because he had to, _had to_ touch Sam again.

“Don’t wake up,” he said, breathless. He dropped back down onto the bed and skimmed his hands as lightly as he could up Sam’s sides, pressing a kiss below his navel.

“The fuck are you talking about,” murmured Sam, reaching for him. “I’m a goddamn superhero, I was awake soon as you came back inside. Get up here.”

Sheppard was about halfway there, mouthing experimentally along the line where Sam’s ribs met his stomach, when his brain kicked in and he looked up. “Superhero?”

“Speaking figuratively,” Sam said, with a little difficulty. That was interesting. John licked where he’d been kissing, a long warm wet stripe, and was rewarded with the hiss of an indrawn breath. Blunt fingernails raked delicately up his back, only for Sam to drag them back down from shoulders to waist, scratching the skin hard until he shuddered. But wait.

“Superhero,” he said again, now pressing his mouth against the midline of Sam’s sternum, feeling the pulse against his lips. It was still heady and dizzying, to let himself do this.

“Fuck,” said Sam, and sat up. John lost his balance and went back on his heels, and Sam’s hand shot out and grabbed him, just like that first night in the club.

“You got a choice, airman. I can either spank you and then jerk you off, or we can talk.”

“That’s not much of a choice,” said John, already panting, both of Sam’s hands wrapped around his biceps now; and they were off.

•

The sun was coming up, and Sam’s right arm ached pleasantly. He lay on his stomach, half-drowsing, half-thinking about brunch and whether to drag Sheppard with him, to meet Sarah and the kids. After a while he turned to reach for John’s arm, missing his touch. “What is this,” he finally let himself ask, loosely circling John’s wrist, his own fingers dark against the wide band of pale skin, where clearly something tactical had spent a lot of time and wasn’t there anymore.

“What are these,” countered John, leaning over on an elbow and touching Sam’s back, brushing fingers down the strips of calloused skin which lay along the long muscles on either side of his spine.

No matter how many versions of the jetpack they’d tried, R&D had never figured out entirely how to stop the wings from chafing against their skin, somewhere. It had been worse for Riley, with his ridiculous tender pale hide that sunburned and bruised so easily (and so beautifully). More than once, after a long mission, Sam had peeled off an undershirt stuck to open blisters, wiped away dirt with pads soaked in hydrogen peroxide, smoothed hydrocortisone and antibiotic cream over the weeping redness, and carefully taped on gauze, Riley swearing a blue streak the entire time.

He startled a little at the memory and John jerked away, as if afraid he’d hurt him. “No, it’s all right,” he said, and reached out for John’s hand again, put the fingers back where they were. “I’ll tell you, okay. It’s time—we should level with each other. You might not believe me at first, but I’ll tell you. We gotta get this part over with,” he heard his voice saying, but he didn’t completely agree with it. “I’ll even go first.”

He sat up, then took a deep breath. _Climbing high, into the sun._

“Have you heard of the Avengers?”

John raked a hand through his hair and made it stand on end. He looked confused. “You mean, like the comic books?”

Sam heard a pained sound come out of his throat. _Thanks a lot, Tony, for the merchandising_. There were plastic action figures, too, and some terrible animated movie in the works, in which probably they would all have booming baritone voices and look like giant square-headed robots, even Natasha.

“More like the actual people the comic books are based on.”

John threw his head back and laughed, the hideous braying one, and Sam didn’t know what to say to interrupt it, just waited it out, until John caught his eye and saw he was serious, and went completely still.

Sam felt strangely wretched. He should have told Sheppard; this had gone on way too long. “Yeah. Those guys.”

“Are you—but _you’re_ not—you’re not really—?”

“Sort of. Not full-time. I’m kind of...on call, right now.”

“But you’ve been, you’re one of—”

“Only recently,” said Sam, sounding defensive even to his own ears, which made no sense. “I didn’t have anything to do with New York.”

John blew out a breath, sat up, then got out of bed wearing nothing but his dog tags and fished his BDUs out of the wad of clothing on the floor. “You’d better start at the beginning.”

“Well, first of all, there’s—shit, I still don’t know how much of this I can tell you.” He put his head in his hands for a second, and then went on. “Fuck it. I’m just gonna say it and if Fury wants to kill me later, he can. So there’s an organization called SHIELD, okay. I don’t know if—I don’t even know how much most people know about them. And then there’s another bunch called HYDRA, they’re basically crazy fascist scientists left over from World War II, and they’re the bad guys. But SHIELD were the good guys, at least until we found out they weren’t, and—okay.”

John had pulled on his pants by then and still didn’t say anything, but the angle of his head made Sam think he was listening closely. Sam swallowed, started over. “So back in April I was still living in DC, working at the VA. It’s like the last semester of my degree, and things are chill, so I’m running around the Tidal Basin one morning like always and this asshole keeps running past me, and it’s—it’s Steve Rogers. And we start talking.”

Sheppard turned, and his face—Sam hadn’t ever seen a look on it quite like that.

“You don’t believe me.”

John tilted his head and smiled, and his eyes were ruthless, and for the first time Sam thought he could probably be a reasonably formidable CO when he wanted to. “I think you should finish.”

So Sam went on, at some length. When he told it properly, it was a pretty long story. He even left out the EXO, for now, and just went with the verb “helping,” which was cumbersome at times. But he still managed to hit the high points, he thought: the parts with Steve and Natasha, and Rumlow, and Pierce and the helicarriers, and SHIELD having been infiltrated. He left out some of the more nerve-wracking moments, the ones that still woke him up sometimes, like Bucky reaching through the car window and ripping the steering wheel out of his hands; or right after, when he rolled off the car door and didn’t even have time to see his life flash in front of his eyes, just figured he would get run over and that would take care of the situation for him. Or maybe worst of all screaming out he didn’t _know_ what goddamn floor but Nat and Fury had better _figure it out right the fuck now_ —instead he kind of focused on the politics, and how Bucky had pretty much trashed the whole situation, and nearly killed Cap, too, because he didn’t remember anything except how to assassinate people. But now he had moved in with Steve, and had Tony working on his tech, so Bucky was definitely getting better, Sam finished awkwardly. Which is why he’d gone ahead and taken the summer off, to meet his sister and her kids. Besides, Steve knew where to find him. If they really needed him. For anything.

There was a long pause.

When he risked a glance up, John was leaning back against the brown laminated dresser, taking the weight off his bad leg, arms crossed, lips compressed into a line. His face had shifted from expressionless to what looked like thoroughly pissed off, and Sam didn’t get it.

“I’m sorry for not telling you?” he tried.

“So that’s why you thought if I’d been—stateside, I would have known about you.”

“Kinda hard to miss me, for a while there.”

John’s eyes narrowed. “So wait—why you? What’s your superpower? Didn’t you already know you had it?”

Sam honestly didn’t think he could explain this one. “Uh, that’s—okay, you know what, hang on, this’ll be faster.”

He grabbed his phone and pulled up YouTube, then typed in “helicarriers potomac bird guy.” John watched, face gone back to blank.

It stayed blank as Sam held out the phone to him; he took it just as some shaky-handed tourist zoomed in on Sam in the EXO-7, spiralling off the edge of the helicarrier to avoid anti-aircraft flak, wings clearly outlined and looking pretty sharp in the sunlight, if Sam did think so himself. The video’s quality wasn’t that great, though, and it went in and out a few times, once pretty dramatically when he’d had to start shooting back and the screaming tourist apparently dropped her phone. It cut off just as he’d snatched Steve out of mid-air and hauled him back up to the deck, which Sam had to admit didn’t look nearly as cool as the other stuff but had really been quite a feat, given what a meatball Rogers was and how fast he’d been falling. Sam was lucky not to have dislocated a shoulder, frankly.

John stood motionless, phone in his hands. Sam thought about showing him the one where Bucky had torn off one of the EXO’s wings, but then decided not to. Things felt awkward enough.

John looked down at him, eyes glittering. “You told me you weren’t a pilot.”

Sam hastily took his phone back before John could decide to throw it at him. “I’m not. And _I_ don’t fly, it’s all the suit. Not like I can jump out a window and take off. Steve can’t even fly, he just sort of—jumps really far.”

John straightened up, all angles, and started to pace, limping. Sam couldn’t think why he would be so mad. Okay, so it’s not every day you find out the guy you just started boning is a part-time Avenger, and he could see how that might be a shock; but come on. Besides, there was about to be some serious quid pro quo.

“We probably should have talked about this, Shep, I get that, but why are you acting like I killed somebody?”

John wheeled on him. “Haven’t you?”

“Seriously? Says the _fighter pilot?_ I only shoot back at the ones shooting at me! I don’t _bomb_ people.”

“Neither do I, that’s why I fly helos,” John countered. “ _You_ said you were pararescue!”

“I was! I am! We busted _ass_ at Bagram. It’s just that after Yuma, we both got seconded into the EXO program and never bothered with chutes after that, so all my drops were more like…”

“More like flying. Because you can actually _fly.”_ His voice rose up and cracked on the last word.

Sam started to feel angry himself. He came off the bed, got all up in Sheppard’s face, and stopped watching what he said. John’s eyes were wide and green and bright, and Sam didn’t have time for this shit. “Is that it? Are you _jealous_? Because I was gonna offer to take you up, since you’re such a throttle jockey and you’re permanently _grounded_ ; but you know what? That’s fine with me, motherfucker, if you’re too busy being an asshole about it you can just go f—”

Here Sam stopped, because John had turned to lean against the dresser, head down on his arms, laughing—not, thank god, the awful horsey one, but something worse: silent hysteria. Sam hesitated, then put a hand on his shoulder, worried, but John shoved it off. Sam felt, for the first time, something like fear gripping his stomach, and took an automatic step back.

“No, I’m not fucking jealous,” John said, after a long moment, scrubbing both hands over his face. He turned around to face Sam and crossed his arms back over his chest, body one long tense line, and all of a sudden Sam got it: John wasn’t pissed off, he’d just had the shit scared out of him. Of course—Sheppard was a soldier. He didn’t panic, he got dangerous. Sam backed away further and sat back down on the bed, hands turned palm up.

“Shep, I didn’t lie to you,” he said, keeping his voice quiet and even.  
  
“I get that,” John said. “I just didn’t know you had an even stupider job than I do.”

Sam forced himself not to look away. “And by stupid, you mean—?”

“Funny story.” John rocked his weight back onto his heels, opened his mouth, then said nothing for what felt like a very long time. _We’re either both about to get our clearances revoked, or we’re going to be court-martialed_ , Sam was thinking distantly, when Sheppard finally spoke, voice tight.

“So tell me—in all your superheroic experience, ever heard of something called a stargate?”

Fuck; Tony had been right. Sam felt the room tilt, just a little. “Sheppard,” he said, “If a stargate does anything like what I think you’re gonna say it does, then honestly? It's the least fucked-up thing I’ve heard _this year.”_

“How about the Pegasus Galaxy?”

Sam shook his head, mind whirring. “Not—no. Unless that’s, like, some kind of Asgard shit. I’m strictly an in-atmosphere traveler.”

John grinned at him, the one Sam already thought of as the here-comes-trouble smile, the triangular evil one with the head tilt and the crazy eyes.

“Well, I’m not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry—Asgard, did you say?


	19. Splash

By the time Sam had wrapped his head around the concept of Sheppard living in another galaxy, there’d been some cursing, and at one point some brief incredulous yelling; but John had grabbed a pen and one of the yellow legal pads off the top of the kitchen counter and made hasty renderings of, in order: a drone, a control chair, both versions of the stargate, a MALP, a dart, three kinds of Wraith, a puddlejumper, a ZPM, and finally a surprisingly accurate sketch of Atlantis itself, though the towers weren’t quite to-scale. But by the time he’d finished explaining all that, even leaving out Elizabeth and Ford and the Replicators as well as various other xenocidal enemies of the Tau’ri, and consistently referring to Rodney only as a teammate or his CSO, it was nearly noon, and John felt trembly and exhausted. And then he’d had to burn all the drawings in the sink with his cigarette lighter, after opening the sliding-glass patio door so it wouldn’t set off the smoke alarm.

Sam finally had to text Sarah asking for a raincheck on their weekly brunch, somewhere around the part where Carson piloted the cityship to the Milky Way. John felt bad about his having to cancel, but Sam shook his head and said, “I’ll see them after church tomorrow. Just—keep going.” So John went on to the second part of his ten-year tour, picking up with Atlantis’s weirdly dull months of being cloaked in the California Pacific before being allowed to return to Pegasus. And how once back on Lantea, thanks to Carson and Keller’s hard-won contributions updating the Wraith genome—which they’d only been able to reverse-engineer successfully after the Travelers had come across one of the Ancients’ backup databases, one featuring actual documentation—Teyla and her team had been able to negotiate a lasting truce with Todd. While the Wraith and the Pegasus inhabitants weren’t going to be playing beer pong anytime soon, at least now that the surviving superhives had a plentiful food source (and one that was, most importantly, not sentient), it had meant enough there was finally enough downtime for the Atlantis science division to start working on fabricating their own ZPMs—

At this point he ground to a stuttering halt. It was almost one, and they hadn’t eaten anything. Sheppard had nothing in the kitchen and they were in no shape to go anywhere, so Sam called for Thai delivery from a place he said was decent. While he was on hold, John stepped outside to smoke, hands nerveless, and felt Sam watching him intently through the plate glass, as if he might suddenly dematerialize or something. John couldn’t blame him—he felt a little shocky, himself.

The food showed up, with, thank god, large Thai iced coffees and extra spring rolls. John hadn’t expected to be hungry, but was halfway through his massaman curry (mild by Satedan standards, creamy with coconut) when Sam suddenly sat up straight and dropped his forkful of pad thai.

“Holy shit, Sheppard. You live on another _planet._ You fly a _spaceship.”_

“It’s just a little puddlejumper.”

“Why do I feel like this is you trying to be humble,” Sam said.

John felt sheepish. “I mean it—thanks to the interface, and the inertial dampeners, it really is more like driving a minivan. Sure, a minivan that can achieve escape velocity, and, okay, has tactical, and shielding, and a cloak—but still. It doesn’t handle like a fighter. The F-302s are way more of a rush.” He shoved his curry to one side and drew one on the back of the receipt; it came out a lot better than the other sketches, because John had always been good at drawing airplanes.

Sam leaned over the coffee table to inspect it, then stroked its edges, apparently not caring if he got ballpoint ink on his fingers. “That’s freaking gorgeous.”

“You’re telling me. Fastest thing I’ve ever flown, besides the city. They maneuver like crazy. Although it’s been a while, and the last time I scrambled in one, we couldn’t—” _Oh shit_ , he thought, flustered, and took an overly large bite of sweet potato to buy himself some time.

It wasn’t going to work; Sam already knew most of his tells. But Sam was winding rice noodles studiously around his fork, gaze averted. “Yeah, about that.”

John put it all together so fast his head swam. “You…never said what squadron you served in.”

“58th Rescue,” said Sam, still not looking up from his styrofoam container.

“Nellis,” said John.

“Yeah.”

“But you were doing drops. You said you were out of Bagram.”

“When we weren’t testing EXOs in the Box, yeah.”

“This’d be…January of 2009?” John asked.

“Nellis.”

He shut his eyes tightly, like it might go away. “So you saw—”

“A fucking huge explosion. But mostly if you work anywhere around the Ranch, you learn to keep your mouth shut. There was radiation, and they sealed it off; we didn’t ask questions. We were busy with our own op, anyway.”

“Jesus Christ on a pogo stick.”

“What are the odds, right?” Sam’s eyes were back on him, and this time the usual velvet-warm brown was amber and sharp. “So why’d you bomb it?”

“Why did we—what? I didn’t bomb anything, I was going after the Wraith! They took out our last control chair, the IOA had it moved from McMurdo to 51.” So it would be, supposedly, _safer._ If you didn’t have a keen sense of dramatic irony, apparently, you couldn’t work for the IOA. (These SHIELD suits sounded a lot like the IOA, actually, and John could only imagine that somewhere very very far behind the scenes, there was some terrifying, triple-agent level of clandestine overlap.)

“So you really were at McMurdo?”

“After some shit I pulled at Kandahar, way before you got there. What do you mean _really were_ , how would you know where—”

“Did you miss the part where I’m an Avenger? I didn’t know what the fuck your Really Really Classified shit was about, so I called in a favor, alright. In case I was about to eat dirt while falling for a goddamn HYDRA asset. Think about it for a second: a ridiculously hot Air Force officer just _happens_ to show up in my local _kink_ club and hit all the right buttons. And immediately lies to me about his last assignment.”

John could admit that, from a certain perspective, it might have looked bad. “Falling for?”

“Don’t get stuck on that part, you know that part already.”

“Ridiculously?”

“Sheppard.”

“Okay, okay, but for that matter, how do I know _you’re_ not the honey pot? Maybe you’re Gou’ald.”

Sam abandoned his pad thai, closing the cover and pushing it away. “I don’t even know what that _is,_ for starters.”

“That’s exactly what a Goa’uld would say.”

“Do you wanna talk to Steve?”

“Do I want to _what?”_

Sam waved a hand toward his phone, lying face-down on John’s ugly glass-topped coffee table, which had mysterious long, deep scratches in its surface. Probably a family with kids had been quartered here. “I guess he could be a goo-whatever, too, which I assume is some kind of alien bullshit; but you gotta admit that’s less likely. Especially since he was frozen in ice for however many decades, and since he’s, you know. A national icon for justice and peace, _who saved all of humanity.”_

John had saved humanity a couple of times himself, sort of; but usually only a few people ever knew about it, and his hands were less and less clean after every last-minute salvage job. Not to mention that he’d primarily been the one to blame for putting humanity in danger in the first place.

He surveyed what was left of his curry, mostly the ends of green beans, and shut his takeout container too. “Maybe we should...start over.”

“I think we sort of have to.”

“With the premise that we’re both human, and non-evil, and take it from there?”

“Sounds fair.”

“And at some point, our COs make us sign a bunch of 312s.”

“Do you even have a CO?”

“Sort of. It’s gonna be fun explaining this one to him.”

O’Neill was going to kick his ass all the way from Cheyenne back to Pegasus. _Hello, sir, how’ve you been. Golfing much? Houston turned out to be pretty cool after all, once I hooked up with a sadistic Avenger._

“But here’s what I don’t get,” Sam said, turning on the sofa to face him so fast his coffee sloshed in its clear plastic cup. John’s was already gone (force of habit; perils of working alongside Rodney McKay). “New York, 2012. I was there for the clean-up, Sarah too—and let me tell you, it was one hell of a clean-up. I get that your stargate shit is still classified, but where _were_ you? How could your people stand by while the sky literally ripped open and all holy hell rained down? Hundreds of civilians died. The Chitauri had giant cyborg _dragons_ , Sheppard. Y’all had to have known.”

Huh, he’d never even thought about that before: Chitauri, Tau’ri. John had to assume Daniel Jackson and the other linguists with security clearance had done some serious analysis on that one. He allowed himself a second to feel overwhelmed before he reached out for Sam’s hand, wanting the reassurance and letting himself ask for it. Sam met him halfway and readily slid his fingers between Sheppard’s, grip tight and comforting, and John felt a wave of relief. _Falling for._ Okay.

He cleared his throat. “I only know about Atlantis, not the whole IOA. It’s just—it’s not like we didn’t hear about the attack,” he said, “but there wasn’t actually that much anyone could have done. SGC probably could have gotten a _Daedalus_ -class warship there, maybe the _George Hammond_. But not for a couple of weeks”—Sam’s eyebrows flew up—“and even then it’d just have been filled with…”

“…regular humans,” Sam finished, understanding at once.

“Pretty much. And weapons no one would have wanted us to fire on midtown Manhattan. I guess they could have sent in ground forces, but the Marines and National Guard were already there. And it’s not like Atlantis could have done anything—by that point we’d long since left the Milky Way, after being on the moon.”

Sam had a pretty good poker face. “The moon, you say.”

“Yeah, the, um, the moon. We were on the dark side, so we didn’t have to stay cloaked. It really is dark there,” he said, irrelevantly. Carson had made them all take megadoses of vitamin D, especially the kids. Katie figured out a way to flavor the syrup with gredelberries, so Torren didn’t make faces and cry every time he was given a spoonful; eventually he’d even chased after Keller begging for it.

“You were on the _moon_.”

“Just for a few months, though. Right before we went back to Pegasus.”

“The moon _._ ”

“Okay, you seem kind of hung up on that, and I’d just like to remind you that you’re apparently best friends with Captain America, whom you call ‘Steve’ and have on speed-dial.”

Sam smiled, the slow easy one. “You said _whom.”_

“I went to Stanford, they made us learn how to read.”

“The moon,” Sam said, one more time, but now he was grinning.

“What’s your point, dumbass,” John said, reaching out with his other hand to tug at Sam’s shirt and pull him half into his lap, somehow not close enough even though they were only a couple of feet apart.

“My point,” said Sam, letting himself be drawn in, “is that this is the weirdest conversation I’ve had since, oh, I don’t know, a deranged HYDRA operative chased me through a crumbling building. And I’d kind of like to be done,” he added, between closed-mouth kisses that shouldn’t have been hot, but left John feeling out of breath and needy. “Done with having this conversation, that is. Also done with being chased by HYDRA, and falling out of buildings. Not done with kissing.”

“Sounds like you’re in the wrong line of work,” John said. He slid his hands under Sam’s t-shirt to reach warm skin, and Sam let him get away with it.

“Bible,” Sam agreed. “Anyway, if we’re going to keep having this conversation, we should at least go outside. This all might seem less like a pizza dream if we were on the beach.”

“Beach?” said John, motion arrested in mid-caress.

“You should see your face right now. You look like a golden retriever and I just said, walkies.”

“How far is it? We can take my car,” John said, abandoning Sam to stand up and look for his keys in the mess on the kitchen counter. Sam raised an eyebrow but didn’t give him shit, which was good because suddenly John felt like if he couldn’t see the ocean _right then_ he might fall over and die.

There was no traffic, and it was a short drive, with both of them quiet, Sam slumped back comfortably in his bucket seat, eyes closed, not seeming nervous when John left the speed limit somewhere behind them. He didn’t even say anything when John turned up the Mountain Goats. (Cadman had gotten him hooked on _Life of the World to Come_ , because it turned out her mother’s last name was Murphy and they were both recovering Catholics. He’d made her listen to a bunch of Johnny Paycheck and Merle Haggard in revenge, and she’d paid him back with Bright Eyes and Bon Iver.)

 _in the burning fuselage of my days_  
_let my mouth be ever fresh with praise_

As always, Sam delivered what he promised. Sylvan Beach wasn’t much of one, just a couple of obviously manufactured sandbars with a short pier between them, bracketed by stone jetties. Tiny whitecaps pulsed inland in irregular rows, dotting the water so it looked more like the surface of a lake than of the ocean. But it was a beach, and the sand was clean, and the water was dark blue farther out from shore and a milky dove-gray where it washed up. Faster than Sam could say his name John had ditched his sunglasses and cane up by the scrubby saltgrass, stripped down to boxers, and started to wade in heedless of Sam’s amused protest behind him.

“Oh for—look, next time just _tell_ me, we could have brought—” but John lost the last of his words as he dove under and swam out in one long rush, as far as he could until he had to come up for air, vision blurred with salt water and what was probably a really stupid look on his face.

His nose was running; he wiped it with the back of his hand and bobbed there for a few minutes, treading water and facing out to sea, where there were some vague refinery-like shapes, or maybe factories, or oil rigs. He went back down and came up again to get the hair out of his face. A steady firm tug sucked at him under the surface, the long current already trying to pull him downshore. He spun around to find Sam, who had his jeans rolled up walking slowly along the tideline, Nikes in one hand. He was looking at the sand, maybe for shells, and even this far out John could see he had sort of a dubious expression. John shook back his hair, sneezed, and startled himself by laughing aloud. He flipped over onto his back and floated for a while, sun-blind, light already hot enough on his bare shoulders and chest to burn. Everything was momentarily radiant, shining and painful and, just for that instant, whole and entire, without any future or fault.

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not a very long chapter but I desperately needed to get this WIP moving again before I posted some more intense longer chapters coming up. For the curious, gredelberries are the wonderful Pegasus creation of [auburn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/auburn/works), a magnificent fic writer everyone should read.


	20. Firewalled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Specific warnings at the end, for consensual BDSM activities: stay safe, darlings!

The beach was completely fake, with powdery trucked-in sand and a suspicious absence of seaweed, but it still took cajoling to get Sheppard out of the water, and Sam narrowly escaped getting dragged in after him. In the end Sam promised him shaved ice, which proved to be sufficiently motivational. Even then, John, shirtless and with sand in his hair, had frowned at the board listing all the flavors and asked for exactly one half-pump of ginger. Sam hadn’t even known it _came_ in ginger; he rolled his eyes and told the kid behind the counter to give him two pumps of whatever syrup John didn’t want. The truth was Sam had ulterior motives beyond snow cones; he’d thrown his duffle in the back of John’s car, alongside his cane, without comment. John had noticed, and also said nothing.

Sheppard drove them back to Sam’s place, seemingly unconcerned that his boxers had soaked all the way through his jeans. He drove with his left hand on the wheel, using the other to skip forward repeatedly on what looked suspiciously like a third-generation iPod Touch—yet another freakish modification to his truly tragic Chevy, which was maybe held together with alien technology—until he finally stopped on what sounded like a wheezy accordion with a lone baritone voice, full and rich, backed by a chorus of people all singing in—was that Urdu? It didn’t sound like Pashto or Dari.

“Shep. Hey. Yo, _colonel,”_ Sam said, too lazy and sun-warmed to bother much with protocol, which they’d pretty much blown past around the time Sam had picked out a new flogger anyway. John turned down the volume, but not by much. “Are you a Hare Krishna? Should I be worried?”

John quirked a corner of his mouth but didn’t look away from the road. “It’s just kirtan. Reminds me of Teyla, and Ronon. They were—they’re my teammates.”

Sam figured he’d better not ask, even though those clearly weren’t your average American names. And John had said _team_ , which meant special tactics, or even—wait; right. Another galaxy. He kept forgetting, maybe because Sheppard was just sitting next to him like some normal zoombag, half-slouched against the car door, the elastic of his boxers just visible above his falling-off jeans, a short angry scar across the pale olive skin of his bony hip. You never forgot with Steve, because of his being gorgeous and built like a svelte firetruck. But Sheppard looked like any other scrawny dirtbag airman in aviators and a grin, like he probably broke red all the time and couldn’t uphold grooming standards even when he wasn’t deployed. Currently, his worst cowlick stood up at a ninety-degree angle to his head. Come to think of it, Sam was a little surprised that he didn’t have a beard.

“Why don’t you?”

“Why don’t I what?”

“Have a beard.”

John rubbed his chin, shrugged. “Habit, I guess. And it itches. Plus I’m going gray.”

“Looks good on you, though.”

John shot him a quick sideways glance, then rolled his eyes. “Easy for you to say; you’re not the one going gray.” Fair enough, Sam thought, although Sheppard didn’t seem like the vain type. That came from long practice, he was willing to bet, the same way Steve avoided reflective surfaces and had a gentle way of turning any physical compliments back onto the kindness of their giver.

Most of the time it didn’t even occur to Sam that John was older, much less that he outranked him by an order of magnitude. When John’s muscles went pliant under his touch, when his eyes widened and met Sam’s and said _yes_ , none of the other stuff mattered. Not even the part where John apparently commanded several hundred Marines (which still didn’t make sense) on another _planet_.

They had pulled up in the lot outside of his condo. John shifted the Chevy into park and looked uncertain, hand on the ignition, like he wasn’t sure he was invited inside.

In spite of the whole thing being a mess, Sam somehow felt like he had it figured out. That was probably delusional; but he was actually pretty good at figuring out what to do in catastrophes, given that he’d trained to do precisely that, since he was nineteen—and without a doubt, that’s what this was. They were both headed downrange full-blower, and it was way too late by this point to do anything besides ride it all the way to zero. _What goes TDY stays TDY_ , he thought; and then, _Fuck it, I’ll deal with that later._

“I brought your meds,” was what he said instead, and the look John gave him was hilarious. “You could stay the night. Unless you have a hot date with with a life-sucking alien, or whatever.”

“We get Sundays off,” said Sheppard. He flashed a smile, then, somewhere between nervy and fronting, but well on its way to cocky, and Sam felt that swooping almost-sick feeling, low in his stomach, that he hadn’t felt in a long time.

He wanted to know things, and he knew that, deep down, John wanted to tell him. And he thought he knew how to find them out; maybe not tonight, maybe not all of them, but eventually.

•

After two tours in the Registan, there were few things Sam hated as much as sand; maybe being shot at by Bucky on a bad day. He made John stop at the front door so he could dust off the worst of it, before he stripped him down to skin and pretty much threw him bodily into the shower. Over the sound of the spray he yelled at John to use the attachment and not to be stingy with the tropical body gel, while he pulled off his own clothes and washed up at the sink with a bar of soap that refused to lather. Sand was seriously some primitive bullshit; like glitter, it got everywhere, but it didn’t make twinks look pretty at the club, it just gritted and itched and became a literal pain in your ass.

He’d left a towel draped at the foot of the bed and now John sat there bolt-upright on the edge, still drying his hair. He wasn’t fidgeting, but he looked tense, and Sam couldn’t quite tell if it was the good or bad kind. That was okay; he’d be able to get a better read with his hands. He stopped in front of him and ran his fingers through Sheppard’s damp hair, unable to resist the temptation to tighten his fist in it at the top, where it was longest and most inviting.

“Why do you like my stupid hair,” Sheppard asked, but it wasn’t quite a question. He let the towel slip from his fingers, slowly, until it fell to the floor. He already sounded loose and wobbly, but he was also still able to talk, which Sam didn’t need. He especially didn’t need the self-deprecation. He moved in closer and put his other hand on John’s throat.

“You can shut up now, beautiful,” he said, pleasantly, but he put a little steel into the grip he had beneath John’s chin and John swallowed, hard, against the pressure of his palm, and made a face like he wished he’d stayed quiet in the first place. Sam held him there, patient, between both hands, waiting, until John finally looked up. Their eyes met, and caught and snagged and held. Sam let himself look, fall through, let the connection deepen until it was palpable, that thin invisible pulse strung between them like another kind of rope: a hammered metal chain, a string of dark pearls. He let go of John’s throat then, stroked down it, ran his fingers over John’s lips, tried to read him.

“So here’s how it’s going to happen. First, I’m tying you up, because it’s been too long since I’ve done that.” _A week_ , his brain supplied. _Shut the hell up_ , Sam informed it. “Then I’m hurting you, but only in agreed-upon ways. And then, depending how good you can be,”—and here he bent to put his mouth next to John’s ear—“I’m going to let you come. Any of that a problem?”

John looked like he might not have been able to put words together anyway. It took him a few stunned seconds but he nodded, once, lips parted, cheeks flushed.

Sam let him go. He knelt to unzip the duffel and take out separate hanks of peach-colored jute, which he’d ordered online a few days ago (and had paid for two-day delivery). He placed them in a neat double row, the rope buttery-soft in his hands, already conditioned with beeswax, and then pulled out a thin cane, turning to see how John would take this, only to find him looking at the rope. (For now, the clothespins stayed in the bag. You had to keep a couple of surprises.)

“It’s pink,” John observed, sounding vexed, and Sam couldn’t help but laugh.

“That’s really what you’re thinking about right now?”

“Pink is for—”

“So help me, Shep, if you finish that sentence you _will_ regret it. Yeah, it’s pink, and so are you. You’ll look pretty. Trust me.”

“I do. Trust you,” John said, and Sam felt the room tilt, a little.

He turned back to the rope and rearranged it for no reason, just to pull himself together. “Also, at the risk of sounding gay, which I am by the way, this is salmon. Not pink.”

“It’s still—”

“Babygirl, do I need to gag you?” Sam said, almost idly, making the question sound as casual as possible, turned away but listening closely for John’s response. There was a single ragged inhalation, and then shocked silence. “Can you be good for me?” he asked, without looking over his shoulder. “Or do you need some help.”

“I—okay, maybe,” John said, after a pause. His voice was hoarse. Sam let himself smile a little, back still turned. He’d bet Coulson’s entire vintage Captain America card collection that he’d just given John an erection most guys his age couldn’t obtain without pharmaceuticals.

“Maybe what?” Another silence, this one anxious. “No problem,” Sam said, keeping his voice easy, “I can help with that.” He reached back into the bag to pull out a short length of matching dark pink silk, and tied a square knot in the middle of it. Etsy was awesome.

He stood and tilted John’s chin up with one hand. John looked up at him, until he caught sight of something over Sam’s shoulder. “When did all that get there,” he asked, blinking muzzily at the heavy pair of hooks set in the ceiling, with a thick, short length of bamboo hanging between them. Home Depot (which Sam’s Harlem friend Dmitri only semi-ironically called “Dom Depot”) was also awesome, and the clerks at the Webster store had been helpful about load-bearing beams and wood screws that wouldn’t unseat.

“Sometime while you were ignoring my texts. One last question,” Sam said, watching him closely, because this would be hard for John. “Anything you want, that you feel like asking for?”

He was right; John couldn’t do it. He looked away; opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and only came up with, “I already said, I trust you.”

It swept through Sam’s whole body, then, that heady sweet throb that meant taking over, meant taking care of, taking control. “Okay, beautiful. Hush now,” he said, voice warm and quiet rather than reproachful, and tied off John’s mouth, not being particularly careful to keep it loose at the corners where the silk bit into his skin, the square knot pressing down his tongue like a ball would have. He drew out a second, wider piece of fabric and covered the first gag with it, rough with the knot at the nape of his neck, until John shivered and his head dropped, shoulders sagging.

“I get it, you know that, right? It’s okay to need help,” he said, cupping John’s chin in one hand. He pulled his face up to study it. “That’s what it means to be my good girl.” This time he said it deliberately, and he was right; John’s face flushed, and he closed his eyes but not before Sam could see them well up, filled with the hot surge of anger and something more fragile, something still far under the surface. Shame, or maybe just pleasure. That was okay. They could get there together.

“You’ll need this,” he said, and took one more thing from the bag: a small oval buzzer. He put it into John’s right hand and wrapped his fingers around it. “Don’t be butch, use it if you need it.” Later they’d be able to do this with eye contact alone, but he didn’t want John to think, tonight; wanted him to drop down into the rope and the pain the same way he’d thrown himself without hesitation into the ocean. John nodded, so Sam rewarded him by kissing him high on the cheek, above the silk, then trailing a handful of sucking kisses down the side of his neck, where John’s stubble prickled against his lips and the salt smell of his skin made Sam have to shut his eyes for a second, and lick, once, twice, just beneath his ear.

“Perfect,” said Sam. “Same as last time—I’m going to start with a gote around your chest, a less complicated one. But this time I’m going to suspend you, and then bind your legs. Your knees won’t be bent, don’t worry. And I have EMT shears in the bag in case you need out fast.”

John made a muted affirmative sound, so he moved away long enough to put a couple of hanks of rope on the bed, then knelt up behind him and just held him for a moment. He pressed his face into John’s neck, one arm wrapped around his chest, and let John lean into it, secure; let himself feel how good it was to keep him upright, take John’s weight onto him using all his own strength.

He untwisted the first coil of rope; it parted cleanly into soft loops, a little slippery in his hands. Moving slowly at first, he drew John’s arms behind him, one at a time, then tied his wrists together. He listened to John’s breathing change as he drew the rope across his skin, felt the almost imperceptible shift in his body. As he had before, John started to slump as soon as the first two doubled loops went securely around his upper arms and chest, then a second set, lower, beneath his pectorals. Sam focused on the movements as they came more quickly; kept them short and light, snapped each knot taut and moved swiftly on, all the practiced habits of how to uncoil and reposition and feed the rope through a tight bind still there. The rope sprang to life in his hands, John’s body already familiar, his narrow shoulders and the sloping curve of his spine as he sagged, strands of dark hair drifting forward into his face. From this angle Sam could see it wasn’t really black; the last of the daylight through the window picked out the warmth in it, a rich chocolate brown, a few almost auburn strands, threads of silver at the nape and temples.

Sam kissed the skin of his neck, then grabbed the center of the box tie in one hand and yanked, once, sharply. John fell back against him, pulled off balance, head against Sam’s shoulder. “Everything okay?” John nodded, a crease between his eyes, but Sam could tell it was concentration, not discomfort; he’d seen it on Riley’s face enough times, usually when he was trying to work through a tactical problem. Sam needed him to stop thinking. He wanted to stop thinking, himself. _This isn’t Riley—snap yourself out of it._

“What a good girl,” Sam told him, touching the side of his face, and this time he got to watch Sheppard just take it, swallow it down, not fight it, eyes soft and hazel, and he reached down and stroked his cock, just a little, two pulls, three, just enough to feel the silken skin of him, sliding loose and hot over the hardness. “Stand up for me, beautiful.” Ideally John would have been on the floor beneath the ceiling rig, except he couldn’t bend his legs for that long. Having a sub who couldn’t kneel was its own kind of fascinating challenge. He hauled John to a standing position and half-walked him forward until he was underneath, unsteady and wavering on his feet, but upright.

The next knot was an important one, and a little tricky, so Sam focused on it, just letting John weave in place. When it was tied off, he passed another doubled rope through the gote and, with three fierce pulls, started to hitch John up off his feet.

Sam exhaled with the effort and felt sweat break out on his forehead, towing hard against gravity until all John’s weight was taken by the rig, his body held up in the rope, feet just brushing the floor. John moaned, a thick muffled noise behind the gag, and Sam pressed against him, wrapped his arms around him and held on, murmuring praise into the back of his neck for an unmeasured moment, his chest against John’s back, bare skin against skin, just breathing him in.

When he felt ready to let go, he turned to get the rest of the rope, then knelt and slid both hands up John’s calves and between his thighs. Sam liked to trace a path, to map out what his next movements would be and let his rope bottom know where he intended to go next; he could almost feel each nerve ending lighting up as it met the skin of his palms. He pressed a kiss to John’s delicate ankle bone, which he’d wanted to do since John had reluctantly come out of the water onto the beach, dark hair plastered against his legs. John made a tiny sound but didn’t pull away or even flinch. _Tying off his beautiful, smart fucking mouth is the best decision I’ve made since we met_ , Sam thought, and kissed the other ankle, running his hand up between John’s thighs, ignoring the whimper.

He uncoiled the last hank of rope and knotted it into a fast modified double column, first around each ankle, then the tops of John’s calves, and finally in a frame around his hips, working steadily. Despite his injuries John was flexible, limber enough they could probably do transitions, but Sam didn’t feel like getting that complicated today, or maybe ever; as good as he was at delayed gratification, it was impossible to see John like this and not want to bruise him like a peach. He was completely bound, without any range of motion, but he still somehow stayed where he was put, pliable as wax, lashes dark against his cheekbones, and it made Sam’s vision swim to see him that helpless, that exposed, allowing himself to be maneuvered, pushed and pulled to wherever Sam wanted him and swaying there, steadied only where Sam’s hands touched him.

He stood up and moved behind John to check the suspension knot, then bent to kiss one hip bone before reaching around for John’s cock, swollen and hot and, he’d been right: the exact same warm flushed color as the rope, his skin dark pink where the rope bit into his flesh. “You have no idea how perfect you are right now,” he said, letting go long enough to lick his palm, tasting the bitter droplet he’d swiped, a clear string trailing from the tip of John’s cock. “I could do anything to you. Spank you, fuck you, come all over you. There’s nothing you could do to stop me.” John made a constricted sound when Sam’s hand came back wet, and his dick twitched in Sam’s grasp, his thighs tightening. Sam closed his grip around it and gave another couple of loose strokes, then a few fast ones, fighting the desire to ditch his plan and just do the last thing already. But as soon as he let go to palm John’s ass, he felt John's legs let go infinitesimally more into the rope, all but drawing Sam’s hand in between his thighs, there where the skin was darker, and softer, and damp with sweat, so that Sam’s touch dragged a little. John quivered when Sam’s thumb brushed against him, experimentally, and Sam thought, _You beautiful, beautiful little slut, oh I am going to wreck you._

He came around in front of John, and showed him the cane. “You saw this,” he said, “but I want you to tell me it’s okay. I’ll warm you up first, but it isn’t like a paddle, or a flogger. This is made out of solid reed and it’s going to hurt.” John’s eyelids drooped, and he blinked hard, clearly fighting to focus his gaze until he managed a nod. Sam lingered there a moment longer, his palm against John's cheekbone and just watching his face, the interplay of want and fear, his need to surrender in counterpoint to his relentless pursuit of suffering. He tangled a hand in John’s hair and jerked his head back, hard, because he could, then let it go without ceremony to watch it flop forward again, to watch another tremor ripple through his body, utterly helpless, all his.

He didn’t warn him, just steadied him with a hand on his lower back and started to warm up the skin. John huffed air through his nostrils, but otherwise didn’t make a sound. The thing about reed canes was they made such a fantastic swish through the air. Sam appreciated the dramatic way that sounded to a tied-up bottom; it had certainly freaked him out, when he switched for the first time. He didn’t linger on the warm-up, just a few swats from up close, before he measured out a longer distance, half an arm’s length, and struck once, left one long perfect mark against both cheeks. That was the other beauty of caning; you could see your work, right there, scarlet and delicious and, oh god, Sam was already hard, already thinking about what it was going to be like to jerk off onto those swollen, reddened stripes. He wanted to come on them, rub it in. He wanted to open up John’s skin. He wanted all of him, everything opened wide, available.

He backed off even farther, breath coming harder, to let the length of the cane dictate the distance. John jerked in the rope with each blow, and moaned behind the gag every time the cane landed, something between an exhalation and a yelp. Sam was going more for sting than thud, so he snapped his wrist and whipped the tip back at the end of each strike, pulled it sharply up off John’s skin like a blow in reverse, which he knew stung like a bitch—but Sam kept one eye on the buzzer and John still held it loosely, fingertips nowhere near the button. He worked him over, rhythmic, methodical, leaving careful parallel sets of lines that bloomed up like silent watercolor tattoos.

Sweat trickled down his temples and he wiped it out of his eyes with his left forearm, not stopping, laying down stripe after stripe, so turned on he was having trouble breathing. John was trembling now, body tensed against the ropes like if they weren’t there to hold him together, he would have flown to pieces. He made increasingly wild-sounding, strangled noises behind the gag. Fuck, Sam wasn’t even going to need to touch him. _Just four more_ , he told himself, swallowing hard; then, _Okay, six. Just half a dozen more_. “You’re so hot right now, babygirl,” he said, voice rough. Two on the left. Two more on the right. “Look at you, look how beautiful you are, so close to coming just from this. Can you do it, can you come for me? Can you be my good girl? Can you be good for daddy?”

John let out what must have been close to a sob, high-pitched enough to be a shriek, and Sam struck just two more times, hard enough to break skin and low, right in the sweet spot, once on each side; and John’s body went completely rigid, arched into a curve. _Probably should have put down a towel_ , Sam thought, dazed, and he dropped the cane, not caring where it fell, and reached around to catch the first hot blurt in the cupped palm of his hand. “Oh god, baby, fuck,” he said, and pressed close against him, the skin of John’s ass burning against his bare thighs, and reached around with his other hand to stroke him through it, the long thoughtless moment that was just John taut and utterly soundless behind the gag, and then screaming again, pulse after wet pulse pulled out of him, his body going lax and limp and him shaking, and Sam felt insane with need. “I’m, I have to—fuck, just, just, _wait_ ,” he got out, and let go of John’s cock, desperate, and slicked himself and pushed between his thighs, still bound tight against each other, John sucking in heavy breaths through his nostrils, and he fucked the soft skin there, holding John’s hips in place with both hands. He pushed the head of his cock again and again into the hot tight space behind his balls, brushing his hole with every thrust, mindless with it, at the same time that somewhere in the back of his head, the mental stopwatch every rope top started once he suspended someone was nearly at the end of its countdown. But he had a few minutes left, he thought, urgent, just a couple more minutes, just one minute—Jesus fuck, he didn’t need a minute, because he was already coming _right now_ ; and he dropped his face into the slick sweaty space between John’s shoulder blades, and thought _oh no, oh shit, oh babygirl I am so in fucking love with you_ , just as the first wave of it hit him and he bit down on one delicate bump of John’s vertebrae, and heard him whimper but didn’t care, shut his eyes against the sudden burn of tears and just came, shuddering.

He finished and slumped down onto both knees; wrapped his arms around John’s thighs and held him there, resting his face against John’s hip before dragging in a deep breath and standing up to untie his mouth. Somehow John still had the buzzer clenched in his left hand. The band of silk was soaked through, and Sam thumbed it down around John’s neck, and then untied the first gag, having to reach into John’s mouth to pull out the knot, because John was too weak and rope-stoned to tongue it out himself. John’s mouth was red and raw-looking, his cheeks wet, eyelashes spiky with tears, and Sam touched his face with his fingertips, wonderingly, disbelieving. He kissed him then, harder than he meant to, because _fuck,_ he was _fucked._

“Sam,” was all John said, his voice almost completely gone, and Sam just said, “I know. I know, beautiful—you were so good, so good for me,” and kissed him again, and one more time, before relinquishing both of them to the process of untying the ropes and taking him down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for completely consensual BDSM activities including: feminization, gags, rope bondage, suspension, caning, intercrural sex, the abrupt last-second appearance of daddy kink, and, uh, I don't know—that moment when you realize you somehow accidentally fell in love with a person who literally lives in another galaxy?
> 
> NB that I haven't been to Sylvan Beach, only driven past it and stared at it from above via Google Earth, so I don't actually know if they have shaved ice. Please don't be mad if you go there and can't get a ginger syrup snow cone.
> 
> Also, I'm taking a couple of weeks' hiatus, as I have a conference paper to write before the end of the month (have I started it, no, no I have not), and my fifty students are feeling sorely neglected. This chapter took forfucking _ever_ to rewrite/edit and post, and I'm so, so sorry; and I love you for reading. And just for being your beautiful selves.


	21. Tied

After Sam had cleaned them both up, and insisted that he drink what felt at the time like an unreasonable amount of water, John slept like Beckett had shot him up with the good stuff. He slept while Sam held him, which was normally a dealbreaker; he slept, apparently, through Sam leaving the apartment, and was still sound asleep when he distantly felt Sam’s weight make the mattress dip. He didn’t wake up all the way until he felt Sam’s hand on his hip, the tickle of beard brushing against his cheek, and then a slightly sticky kiss.

“Hey, babe,” said Sam. He was rustling around inside a white paper bag that was giving off warmth, and something smelled good, like vanilla or maybe cinnamon.

John tried to open his eyes all the way and failed. It was still dark. “Time is it?”

“Doesn’t matter. Sit up, you need some calories.”

“Nope,” said John, and wrapped both arms around his pillow, in case Sam tried to take it away.

“Didn’t hear a safeword,” said Sam, and pulled the sheet off of him, because he was a sergeant. John groaned and rolled over. “Also, I stole your car. It drove okay, for a ragged piece of shit.”

John blinked. “You took my car?”

“Well, I wasn’t gonna walk to NASA at five a.m.”

“You went to NASA?”

“Near there. It’s no big deal.”

John sat up, sort of. “Why?”

“Because you’ve lived here since, what, May, and have yet to experience the glory of the franchise that is Shipley Do-nuts. Open,” said Sam, calm and reassuring, so John did.

The first bite wasn’t anything he was expecting: it was fluffy and yeasty, with an undertaste he couldn’t place, but it reminded him of those deep-fried potato things Rodney loved, from MX7-2P9. “They were still baking, so I got you unglazed, because you’re some kind of alien genetic freak who hates sugar.”

“Maybe that’s why we didn’t die out,” countered John, or would have, but his mouth was full. Instead he chewed, and swallowed, and when Sam held out another bite, he opened his mouth like a baby bird, with an obedience which should have surprised him. He was letting someone hand-feed him, and he wasn’t even in the infirmary.

“Hey,” Sam said, reading his expression. “It’s nothing, Shep. Don’t let it throw you. Any of it.”

John nodded minutely and they finished their donuts together in silence. Sam left briefly to wash his hands, then came back and slid into bed behind him, and wrapped his arms around him without saying a word. It never really got light outside; a hard summer rain started driving against the plate glass doors and windows, and they both fell asleep again.

•

When John woke next, the rain had stopped, and Sam was on the sofa in the living room, eating something out of another paper bag and flipping through one of John’s legal pads, which was admittedly mostly doodles of airplanes, funny little faces he drew for Teyla when Woolsey was at his most bureaucratic and boring, and occasionally all-caps notes to Lorne about stuff neither of them wanted to do and thus wound up delegating to Mehra, who did it better and faster anyway.

John cleared his throat, so Sam would know he was lying there watching. “You realize that’s classified,” he said, through the open doorway. “I’d hate to kill you, you seem a decent fellow.”

Sam coughed, or it might have been a laugh. “I hate to die.”

“Good movie,” John said. He rolled over, cautiously, then stood up to stretch, trying to see the backs of his thighs to check how bad the damage was, but he couldn’t turn that far. He felt with one hand: a couple dozen long thin welts, barely raised above the surface of the skin but raw and incredibly fucking tender, and one long stripe, low down, where his thigh met his ass, where the skin was broken. John knew Sam would insist on dressing it, but he wanted a shower first.

“There’s kolaches,” said Sam, and held up one of what Rodney called pigs in a blanket, only roughly triangular on each end.

John didn’t want to correct his Czech, but Radek made koláče for winter solstice every year, and those were more like little mince pies, filled with gredelberries and served with whipped cream. His stomach growled and he suddenly didn’t care what Sam called them, he needed to eat, like, _hours_ ago.

He draped the sheet over his shoulders before going to take the paper bag from Sam’s hand, and ate the first one standing up. The pastry was cold, but salty and rich and amazing, and he was about to reach in for another when he looked down and saw the page Sam had paused to read.

> _~~we believe~~_ _~~maintain~~_  
>  _~~we say that~~_ _~~these words~~_  
>  _we hold these words_ _ ~~to be true~~_ _as truth:_  
>  _a warm welcome_ _to those from other worlds_  
>  _~~who~~_ _visiting our home for the first time | welcome again_  
>  _to those returning | you have been gone too long | and your_  
>  _absence has weighed heavily on [in?] our souls [hearts?] | we are_  
>  _whole_ _ ~~again~~_ _now that you are among us | we celebrate your being here_  
>  _even as we leave for distant worlds | we pledge to respect all the lands of_  
>  _our neighbo_ _ ~~u~~_ _rs_

[here Rodney, looking over his shoulder, had scrawled in a “u,” and John had struck it out, irritated]

> _and to act with integrity as peaceful ambassadors_  
>  _all travelers with open hearts [minds?] will be welcome here | refugees_  
>  _from tyranny may seek shelter under our roof [shield?] and our people will lay_  
>  _down their lives to protect the weak [innocent] and the just | let this be our pledge_  
>  _to inhabitants of this world [city?] and any we may ever know | we will always strive_  
>  _to come in peace as we go in peace | and you will be always welcome on our shores forever_

Quizzical, Sam looked up at him. “It’s...a poem?”

“Not exactly,” John answered, past the lump in his throat. “More like what’s on the Statue of Liberty.”  
  
“That’s a poem.”

“This is on the stairs. Of the gateroom—where new people first come in, to welcome them.”

“Like an engraving?”

“Yeah, but lit up,” said John, staring at the paper until his eyes blurred. “A lot of stuff there lights up.” When he’d first walked in, and the city had stirred to soft blue shining life under the tread of his boots—he thought about that day almost every time he went up or down from the control room. It never left his mind, those first breathless moments, how the darkness slowly dispelled, the city sending up a quiet radiant message they couldn’t read for a long time.

Even on the days when it was just a job, days when Woolsey was being condescending or Teyla was brittle and brightly hostile or Rodney was grouchy, days when he was limping from a mission or had a head cold or hadn’t had time to shit before breakfast—even when he didn’t have enough Marines to cover the city, when they were all tired and scared and working too many shifts without a break waiting for the next onslaught of hiveships, even then it was always magical, even then he never stopped noticing, and walking up the steps made his heart lift, almost always, a little.

One day last fall, Woolsey had come across some of Elizabeth’s old notes, and asked John to help Teyla with a better translation. He was supposed to send it to Daniel Jackson and kept forgetting.  He realized Sam was still looking up at him. “The Ancients—the Alterans, the ones who passed down the gene—they put it on the central staircase. That’s why each line gets longer, the stairs get wider as you go down.” The bottom two were probably still cracked, from the force with which he’d been thrown across the gateroom floor; at least, no one had repaired them before he’d left the city.

 _Left the city._ The fuck had he been thinking—what if they were attacked, why was he still _here—_

At some point Sam had dropped the legal pad; he was sitting up and had one hand resting lightly on John’s hip, his eyes concerned. “Did I say something?”

“What?”

“Just, you look like you’re about to to go tactical on breakfast.”

He looked down; the bag was clenched in both hands, and his sheet was in danger of sliding to the floor. “I’m fine. I should—I should get dressed.”

Sam scanned his face before letting him go. “Coffee’s on the counter. And if I could get a—”

“—ride back to your bike, yeah, no, sure, of course,” John said. He took a step backward and stood on a corner of the sheet, nearly pulling it off himself. He turned to put the bag down, flustered, and Sam let out a low whistle.

“Not going anywhere until you let me put something on that, beautiful.”

“Shower first,” John blurted, and made a beeline for the bathroom.

In the stall he leaned against the tile and let water run over the welts, zoning out, thinking about the last day he’d been working on that particular page. Mehta and Lorne had more or less taken over his office by that point so he was at a table in the mess, which was fairly empty because it was a bad food day; they were serving chicken-fried swamp-peef cutlets and that stuff like cream cheese soup, which Ronon and Teyla called, for some reason he’d never fully grasped, _beasy mist_.

Unfortunately AP French and grad school German hadn’t really prepared him for this part of his job, and his Ancient was nonexistent, so he was working off Teyla and Elizabeth’s trot, slowly. He kept crossing out lines, trying to convey the stately nobility of the words in English without resorting to either Thomas Jefferson or George Lucas, when McKay had come up behind him and stood there vibrating, looking disheveled and manic, John could feel it through his shoulder blades. He’d come to associate Rodney’s simmering glee with blowing up five-sixths of a solar system, and he hadn’t trusted it again for a really long time, on however many occasions it had also saved his ass.

“Not now, Rodney.”

“Whatever you’re doing, colonel, it can wait.”

Sheppard rolled his eyes, quietly but meaningfully. “What is it this time, Stockholm calling?”

“Maybe,” Rodney had said; he’d heard it in his voice, then, too, that barely suppressed thrill of brilliance, and he’d given up, like he always did, and hooked out a chair with one booted foot, so Rodney could sit down and tell him all about it.

•

When he emerged from the bathroom, Sam was standing in front of his open closet, arms crossed, surveying its sparse contents dubiously.

“Don’t look so worried,” Sheppard said, hearing his own voice turn caustic. “I clean up okay.”

“I know you do,” Sam said, “but I don’t think you wanna meet my sister in dress blues.”

John didn’t so much as twitch. “You want me to meet your sister?”

“Not today, airman. Too much sitting down. But next weekend, if you can make it.” He pulled out a dry-cleaning bag and surveyed its contents critically.

“Well, relax,” said John, and pulled the towel from his waist to scrub at his hair. “I have at least one shirt with a collar.” It didn’t matter. It didn’t mean anything. Anyway he still could be one charming asshole when he wanted; he was an officer and a Sheppard, he had boarding-school manners.

“A shirt with a collar,” Sam repeated, sounding doubtful.

“Look, we can’t all be as stylish as you,” John said. He rifled through a drawer for clean boxers, found an unopened package of them and turned it over, looking for the opening.

Suddenly Sam was up behind him, arms solid around his waist. “True,” he said, kissing the curve of John’s neck, “but I wouldn’t want you to. Though I bet you make those blues look good.”

“Don’t—” John said, but Sam was taking the new boxers out of his hand and stretching the elastic experimentally.

“Oh _hell_ no,” he said, and reached past him for a worn pair of briefs, shoved all the way back in the drawer. John had given up his storage unit in Springs five years ago, when they left the Bay, but there’d been a garment bag and a couple of boxes half-full of stuff left in the back of the Camaro from when Nancy had kicked him out. “Better. But let me get something on those first.”

“Okay, _mom,”_ John said, but the sarcasm didn’t quite land, and Sam just smiled against the skin of his neck and kissed him again before pushing him gently toward the bed. John crawled back onto the rumpled sheets while Sam sifted through his duffel looking for something.

“Your mama still picking out your panties, you got bigger problems than I figured, colonel _._ ”

Sheppard buried his face in the crook of his arm and tried not to hiss when Sam’s fingers made contact, spreading something on the welts that felt cool but also stung. “Sorry,” Sam said, his other hand squeezing the back of John’s thigh apologetically.

“Had worse,” he said.

“I can see that,” Sam said, and John felt pressure along the long insensate line of his scar. “This your kidney?”

“Was.” He shut his eyes.

“And this?” Sam’s palm, cupped around the Iratus bite.

“That one’s—that’s a long story.”

“What about these?”

John felt fingertips, light but sure, sprinkling touches across his shoulders, almost the same places where he’d had freckles as a kid. “Broken glass.” _Elizabeth._

“Older than the kidney, though.”

Without thinking he flinched, jerked one shoulder to throw off Sam’s hand, and Sam didn’t say anything, just let him up. “Done playing doctor? Great, thanks.” He yanked on the boxers, found his dogtags on the nightstand and a mostly clean t-shirt on the floor. Sam watched him.

“I’m your top, Shep, not your medic.”

“You’re not my—” John’s voice gave out.

“Yeah,” Sam said, and somehow Sam was in his space again, they were standing close together in the middle of the floor, legs interlaced, knees touching. Sam smelled like laundry soap and yeasted bread and safety and John wanted to curl against his chest and never move. Sam kissed the side of his jaw and finished pulling down the hem of his t-shirt the rest of the way, carefully settled the elastic of the briefs a little lower on his waist. “Yeah, actually, I am. I know you can’t say it, but—hey. Babe. Look at me.”

He let Sam’s hand tip up his chin until their eyes met. Sam’s smile was rueful.

“Got ourselves a little more than we bargained for, huh.”

Sheppard couldn’t speak. Sam was almost too good to look at, his cheekbones were high and his eyes were clear and his skin had a burnished, almost reddish undertone, and John had a sudden vivid memory of jerking off to one of his cousins’ Jimi Hendrix album covers when he was thirteen.

“We’re not, this isn’t just,” he tried, but still couldn’t finish.

“No, we’re not,” Sam said, and it sounded like a promise. “And it isn’t. It’s more than that, babygirl. So don’t walk it back, alright. Let it be. Let it be however it is.”

His head was full of static and something was threatening to well up, collecting in a mass and surging up from somewhere deep inside him, but he didn’t know what, or how to do anything about it, _you have been gone too long and your absence has weighed heavily in our hearts, our people will lay down their lives,_ until without thinking he rested both palms on Sam’s shoulders, closed his eyes and let his head tip forward so that the front of his head met Sam’s, foreheads nearly touching, in the ceremonial Athosian gesture. Sam held very still, as if he understood, and they stood like that, unmoving, for a long moment, until whatever it was settled enough for him to draw in a breath.

“Okay,” John finally managed, voice cracked and dry. “Okay,” and then he let Sam kiss him, like it would stop the sheer cold howling loss from crowding up inside his throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello petals, just wanted to say: I need a couple more weeks with the last six chapters, and then I'm going to post them all at the same time, because it's just too traumatic to leave you with certain cliffhangers before the happy ending. Editing them has been really difficult, so thank you for your patience.
> 
> [Shipley Do-nuts](https://www.shipleydonuts.com/) (and [kolache](https://www.shipleydonuts.com/what-is-kolache/)) are real (and amazing), but _cream cheese soup_ , _swamp peef_ , and _beasy mist_ are the creations of one of [Janelle Shane's neural networks](http://aiweirdness.com/post/140508739392/the-neural-network-has-weird-ideas-about-what). The translation on the gateroom steps mostly comes from [here](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/150839/are-there-translations-of-ancient-writing-from-stargate-atlantis), but Sheppard and I took some poetic liberties.


	22. Break Red

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings at the end for consensual BDSM activities, if you need them. Stay safe, petals!

The summer settled into a deceptive routine. Sam didn’t feel like interrogating it, so he just went with it. And without his being quite aware of when, Sheppard passed various tests taking him from _someone I’d fuck_ to _someone I’d date_ (though for Sam those were usually pretty much the same).

Sheppard was warm and deferential toward Sarah, and didn’t freak out when she gave him an only slightly less terrifying version of the shovel talk than Sam would have given any of her boyfriends. He was great with Peri and Joey, who took to him right away. Peri in particular adopted John’s lap as her preferred seat during brunch, and he didn’t bat an eye, just cut up her waffle while carrying on a conversation, and never said anything about the syrup in his hair or on his clothes. He was unfailingly polite to waitstaff and retail clerks, even when they screwed up; his good mood was seemingly inexhaustible, in that he never took his misery out on anyone but himself. Other than never getting his hair cut, he had all a career officer’s habits: he didn’t leave clothes on the floor, always smelled nice, and when there were dishes to be washed he started doing them without discussion. He drove like a pilot, far too fast but good at it, never got angry while driving, and always let people change lanes in front of him.

And perhaps most importantly, while he was possibly one of the whitest people Sam had ever met apart from Steve Rogers, he also passed various tests only white guys had to pass before Sam would date them.

Despite having been born in 1967 and raised mostly on a Virginia Thoroughbred farm, John was pretty chill, which maybe had something to do with living in another galaxy. He didn’t tell stories whose punchline was how he was a good white person (actually, he didn’t tell stories at all, Sam had to drag the raised-on-a-horse-ranch one out of him). He didn’t try to touch Sarah’s hair or ask questions about its styling, didn’t ask about the kids’ daddy, and was in fact as well-mannered with her as if he were always on the verge of calling her _ma’am_ , only flirting with her in a restrained, almost innocent, kind of goofy way. He didn’t praise Obama excessively, or misquote Dr. King, or try to have incoherent opinions about black history; he never tried to go all ratchet or use slang, again possibly a result of his having been stationed in another galaxy for the last decade; and he never used the n-word, even when he weighed in that time Sam and Sarah were arguing about East Coast versus West Coast (and Sam told them they were both wrong—NWA was one thing, but GZA and Ghostface Killah were fifty times the writers that even Dre and Tupac were; Sam had no use for that Cali G-funk shit, which just sounded stoned to him, almost as bad as Houston screw). Admittedly all of these were baseline behaviors, but you would be surprised, Sam thought grimly, how many white guys failed.

(Steve, while he’d had exactly zero clues about the language’s evolution from _colored_ to _Negro_ to _black_ to _African-American_ and then back to _Black_ again, all of which apparently Nat had to explain to him, did have the inestimable virtue of being able to shut up and listen, and change his behavior accordingly; and while silent absorption was uncharacteristic of him in almost every other way, Sam thought it probably explained quite a bit about Steve’s survival as a tubercular runt on the streets of pre-war Brooklyn. Well, that and having Bucky as his exasperated personal bodyguard.)

Unlike John, Sarah had flirted outrageously, until Sam stopped just glowering at her and stepped it up to pointed comments about his being taken. “What, I like this one,” she’d said, an appealing color in her cheeks and one hand on Sheppard’s upper arm. “Do you have a brother?”

“I do,” and here Sam could almost hear the _ma’am_ , “but he’s not a sparkling conversationalist like me.” And there it was, Sheppard’s dry turn from earnest to sarcastic that never failed to make Sam double-take, because you could call John a lot of things but probably not that one.

Those were the weekends; weekdays Sam was mostly at Ellington pissing off either engineers or flight crew, and John stepped up his physical therapy. He seemed surprised to find he was actually improving, but Sam wasn’t, given that Sheppard probably approached rehab the way he did everything else, with blind determination and ruthless self-denial. He reported being able to keep up with some of the other soldiers, now, and having moved from the detested torturous giant rubber bands to a slow walk on the treadmill, hanging onto the grips. He seldom used his cane indoors or for short trips, like to the car and back. Sparkling conversationalist aside, he teased Sam more, and occasionally uttered sentences longer than just subject-verb-object. While getting John Sheppard to talk about feelings still gave him a look on his face like he was trying not to be sick, and would maybe rather have bamboo slivers shoved under his nails, he could do it; haltingly, and starting a lot of sentences without finishing them, but he could.

He still had nightmares, but they seemed less violent, didn’t leave him as wrung-out, just awake. Sam had gotten used to Sheppard’s crawling out of bed before dawn, apparently the legacy of a surfing habit; Sam just rolled over and went back to sleep, half-aware John was getting dressed so he could drive out to Sylvan to go swimming. He was a long way away from being able to surf, but his skin grew tan, he put on a little weight, and his muscles softened, became less wiry and more sleek—or so Sam informed him, usually with his mouth pressed against John’s skin.

“Stop admiring me,” John complained, but he couldn’t shift Sam off with just his weight alone, and his hands were tied behind him.

Sam’s laugh was silent, but John could probably feel it against the fine hairs there anyway, where Sam’s beard scraped a little, his lips moving against John’s stomach. John shivered when he bit down on the soft part.

“Did you just tell me what to do?”

“Of course not, why would I do that,” he said without hesitation, which earned him a brisk slap on the dick and the silk gag, presumably what he’d been after in the first place.

Sam muttered to himself as he tied it: “...come down here to spend quality time with family and what do I get, some mouthy zoombag from another damn planet, here I am looking to get away from Steve’s crazy-ass shit but no, I just gotta start dating an _astronaut_.”

“I’m not an—okay fine, fine! you’re r—” John gasped, and then stopped, as Sam twisted his head back by the hair and shoved the knot into his mouth, none too gently.

“Don’t admire you, huh. Don’t _admire_ you. How about if I just own your ass instead,” said Sam, letting his eyes fill with something John was, from the look on his face, learning to dread and crave in equal measure.

 _You already do_ , John’s eyes said; but Sam had the lube in one hand, and was intent on proving it anyway.

That was another thing that was different; the sex remained electric, but it took on another quality as well, something with complexity and texture. Language started to drop away during scenes, and Sam was able to read John’s face easily, even gagged, even when he was writhing and dripping tears and about one slap away from coming.

(Sam shrugged. “I don’t know, man, you’re easy for me to read.”

John bit his lip, face flushing. “Great,” he said. “So I’m just an open book that anyone can—”

“No,” Sam said. “Look at me.” He reached out and turned John’s face toward him, his hand lingering there. “You didn’t listen. I said: you’re easy for _me_ to read.”)

Various activities on Sheppard’s _no_ list moved to _maybe_ , and a couple of _maybes_ became wordless frantic nodding. The most difficult times for him weren’t during scenes but after, when he’d had time to think about exactly what they’d just done, and how much he’d liked it, and probably additional unhelpful thoughts, all of which Sam could practically watch one by one as they flickered across his face like frames of a home movie. Sheppard had clearly spent a lot of effort learning to hold his face still and remain impassive, but Sam secretly loved the way he looked when he was unguarded, loose and sprawling and looking all of thirty years old after a scene. The breathless laugh that reached all the way to his eyes was a beautiful thing, one that Sam bent himself to unlocking as often as possible, even if getting him to hold still long enough for aftercare was a challenge—because Sam, god help him, had always loved a challenge.

His other challenge was getting John to slow his roll, because he was a bratty goddamn zoomie and kept trying to throw himself off metaphorical sexual cliffs. When Sheppard discovered that whispering _fuck me_ was an almost guaranteed way to get Sam to hit harder and come faster, he abused this provocation like it was going out of style.

“No,” said Sam, holding him down by the hair. “Not happening. Trust me, you got exactly zero idea what you’re asking for.”

“But you want to, I can tell—”

Sam kissed him to shut him up, then resettled the left nipple clamp. He’d left John ungagged for this, the better to hear his garbled cries, but if Sheppard was going to keep sassing him—

John gasped at the fresh pain, but twisted toward it, not away. His arms were tied behind his back in a firm double-column, Sam having discovered how flexible his upper body was.

“Come on, fuck me, I want you t—”

“Bitch, I said no,” Sam repeated, trying not to get distracted by what the word _no_ did to both of them. “Your virgin ass will thank me later.”

“You, you just called me _bitch.”_ His eyes were wide with shock, and something else.

“Are you using your safeword?”

“No, Sam.”

It never stopped being a bolt of pure lust to the stomach, the way John said his name. “Good,” he murmured, “Because I want that. Be my pretty bitch and let me take care of you.”

Sheppard made an unclassifiable sound, hips bucking upward, so Sam resumed his slick strokes, keeping them tortuously light and slow; he’d been edging him for close to an hour and John had to be about ready to pass out. He bent to lick the sweat from the hollow of John’s throat, fisting his dogtags in his other hand. “Good girl. Be pretty for me, let me play with you like this.” John’s cock was rock-hard and reddened to the point of pain; Sam added more lube, and drew his hand the entire length of it, from base to tip, and John shuddered.

“Sam,” he whispered, “ _please.”_

Weeks of this, learning Sheppard’s body and the way his mind worked, and he’d never once heard John use that word. It felt like his heart had stopped beating. “What did you just say?”

“Please. Please fuck me.”

Sam had to stop moving, to inhale. “Oh, beautiful. This isn’t your call. Why you even asking?”

“I don’t know, but I— _please,”_ John said, and now Sam believed him. Sheppard looked both bewildered and determined, which was probably a typical look for someone who flew a city.

“Jesus.” He closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them, taking his hand away. “Okay. Fuck. Okay. Okay, but listen. We do this my way, and you don’t talk back, you got it?”

“Yes, Sam,” John said, face serious but eyes glittering a little more than Sam liked. It was always right there in his eyes, everything he tried so hard to keep shoveled under. Sam wondered if anyone else had ever noticed how clearly they spoke, or if they were always too distracted by all the surface charm and niceness. He tightened his fingers in the steel chain around Sheppard’s throat, drawing it up, and shook him a little by it, just to make sure he had his attention.

“Yeah, you say that, but I mean it. If anything— _anything_ —doesn’t feel right, that’s it, that’s the ballgame. I say stop, we’re stopping.”

“Yes, Sam.”

“Now you’re just doing that on _purpose._ ” Sam slapped Sheppard’s dick for emphasis; it jumped under his hand, so he closed his fingers around it and made another slow stroke upward. “You’re gonna regret this tomorrow, anyway, but let’s make sure you don’t regret it tonight, before we pull chocks.”

“Preflighted,” said John, with an eyebrow quirk, and Sam bit back a laugh.

“Kick the tires,” he agreed, and then it was too late, they were both laughing, and Sam made a joke about fighter puke always having the tightest sphincters known to man anyway, and it was all over, at least until Sam kissed the laughter out of him. He put all his weight down onto John, pressed him into the mattress, one hand punishingly tight around his throat, and let the other slip down to describe feather-light circles around said orifice, being stupid levels of careful.

“I’m not _delicate_ , you don’t have to—”

“Do you have a fucking hearing problem? Did we not just discuss this?”

“No. I mean yes.”

“Then shut the hell up. The only words I want to hear out of you are my name, your safeword, and variations on _faster, harder,_ and _more_.” He punctuated each word with a flick of his thumb across John’s skin where it was thinnest and most delicate, making him jerk; Sam smiled, and bent down to bite the inside of his thigh. He waited until Sheppard relaxed a little, enough for his thighs to fall open, before he slid his index finger in up to the first knuckle. John inhaled, but didn’t move, so Sam looked up to check his eyes, which were a pale green-grey at the moment, lit from the side by the last of the afternoon light slanting in through Sam’s apartment window.

He withdrew, added more lube, and slid back in to the second knuckle, holding still to let John adjust.

“That’s—”

“It’s weird, I know. Give it a second.” He shifted to lie down next to Sheppard, eased him over onto his side, and distracted him enough with kissing to press in the rest of the way.

John made a liquid strangled sound, then said, “Sam?”

“Yeah, beautiful?” Sam started finger-fucking him, gentle, easy, feeling the soft silken inner walls start to unclench, slowly.

“What if I, what if I hate it?” He slurred the words, like moving his mouth was difficult.

“You’re just now thinking of this?” Sam stroked even more slowly, brushing lightly over his prostate, rewarded by John’s pupils suddenly dilating to black. “Feel okay?”

“No,” said Sheppard, voice suddenly clear, and Sam stopped moving, but it was too late, because John’s entire body had locked up and he was trembling, coming all over both of them.

“Babygirl,” breathed Sam, and caught John’s mouth in his, shocked open.

He had the presence of mind to pull off the chain connecting the nipple clamps, startling a muffled cry out of John, before getting his other hand back down around John’s cock, still pulsing. He worked him through it with both hands, barely grazing him inside, more careful than before, now that he knew how sensitive he was. John arched under his touch and tried to come up off the bed, but the ropes held him, and Sam wound up on top of him, straddling his thighs and letting go of him finally, both hands filthy-slick, his own dick in dangerously tempting proximity.

“Oh Christ Jesus,” Sam said, poised above him, body taut. He needed a towel.

“Sam, please,” said John again, still arching up, thighs trying to open, and there was that word, why did he keep saying it—

“Hush and hold still,” Sam said, and fumbled for someone’s t-shirt on the floor, to wipe his hands dry, and John’s stomach. He lay down next to him, eased him onto his side so they were facing each other, started undoing the double column as fast as he could, given that John was still writhing, and then pulled John’s arms around to the front of his chest, chafing feeling back into his wrists. He’d never thought he was a fucking service top, but despite everything in him that passed for better judgment, at this point in time he was apparently all about not only hurting a full-bird colonel until he wept but also kissing the tears off his cheekbones.

“You’re okay, you’re fine,” he said, and wiped the last one away with the pad of his thumb, tender. Sheppard half-sobbed, then laughed, then coughed. “Yeah, I know. It’s like that, the first time. You’re okay.” He licked a trickle of salt-sweat off his temple.

“You’ve done this?”

Sam pulled back to give him full-on side-eye. “Have I done this. Have I—this _white boy_ is asking me, have I done this.”

“I meant—you know what I meant.”

“Yes, I know what you meant, and yes, to both.”

Sheppard flopped onto his back, still winded. “You’ve—switched?”

“That’s what we should do, at some point. You should top before you try to bottom.”

John looked like he could hardly hear to stand the words. “You don’t mind?”

“Part of the package. Fly GIB before you’re up front, you know?”

“But I wouldn’t—I don’t want to hurt you.”

“So don’t,” said Sam, and pushed John’s hair back off his forehead. It was still wet with sweat and staying, for once, where he put it. “First of all, it’s not going to hurt or I wouldn’t offer, and second, you can top without being a sadist. Don’t let that shit get confused.”

Sheppard was still clearly catching his breath. “But when, when did you ever—”

“What part of horny teenager did _you_ get to skip out on, because seems like you missed the part where you try everything twice.”

“I guess,” John said, looking embarrassed, and oh hell no. Sam interlaced their fingers.

“Look, it’s not—Riley and me, we were kind of nuts, especially at first. We met straight out of basic and we did everything we could think of—everything we had energy for, after Indoc. But it doesn’t mean—wherever you’re taking it, in that pea-brain of yours. It doesn’t make you more gay, or less, or whatever. Don’t make it weird.”

“I’m not,” John said, unconvincingly, eyes still reddened.

“Uh-huh,” said Sam. “I can see that.”

“I just. I’ve had prostate exams, and nothing like that ever happened.”

“Yeah, but was your doctor as hot as I am?” Sheppard rolled his eyes before covering his face with both hands. Sam poked him in the ribcage.

“If it makes you feel better, just consider all those wasted years as time-in-grade.”

“Oh my god,” John said. “Don’t talk to me like one of your pop tarts.”

“Gotta be a first time for everything. Think about—I don’t know, your first time in a Viper. Puked in your flight suit, right?”

“No,” said John, sounding offended. “I don’t throw up.”

Sam didn’t either, which is part of why he got seconded into the EXO program, but he wasn’t about to let John get away with nonsense. “Never? Not once?”

“Throwing up is against my religion.”

“Even in zero-g?”

John’s mouth set itself into that superior-officer look, and Sam was already thinking of ways to wipe it off his face. “Just how much time have _you_ spent in a centrifuge?”

Sam snorted. “See, that’s why I’m smarter than you.”

“Oh yeah?” said Sheppard, and suddenly Sam was on his back in bed, with John leaning over him looking pleased, probably since he so rarely got to do this.

In a flash Sam had shifted his weight to one side and pinned Sheppard face-down in an easy throw-hold, elbow in the middle of his back, John’s arm twisted up behind him, just enough to keep him still. He asked, tone conversational, “Are you falling out, airman? Are you quitting?”

“Failure to train,” gasped Sheppard, dropping his forehead onto the mattress.

Sometimes Sam couldn’t believe the mouth on this guy. “Oh, so you’re still trying for _humorous._ This is you being _funny_.”

John did something with his hips then that wasn’t funny, that ran up Sam’s spine like an electric shock, some sinuous fluid movement that wasn’t John trying to buck him off but instead trying to close the distance between Sam’s still very erect dick and Sheppard’s ass. Apparently frustrated by the partial success of this maneuver, he did it again, until Sam bent over, twisting his arm harder, and said low into his ear, “That’s about enough of that, beautiful.”

“But I, you—”

“Yeah, I know. But I decide. Not you.”

John slumped back to the mattress, panting and limp. There was something about that split-second, that instant when all the fight went out of him and he went still and willing under Sam’s hands, that made Sam want to snarl. Or to do what he did, which was, still bent over Sheppard, to bite the back of his neck, once, and twist his arm a little harder, until John shuddered and somehow went even more slack.

Sam might have made a noise anyway, he couldn’t be sure, he was trying so hard not to say _mine_.

“John Sheppard,” he said, instead. “And imagine your middle name in there, by the way, because I would say the whole thing, if I knew it.”

“It’s Patrick.” Sheppard’s voice was muffled by the sheets.

“Of course it is. John Patrick Sheppard, stop mouthing off, get down there, and—”

“Embrace the suck?” said John. He turned over under Sam and wriggled downward on the bed, a movement that should have been ridiculous but Sam was suddenly too hard to care.

“So to speak,” said Sam. “Still getting your jokes from _Reader’s Digest,_ huh.”

“No, I got that one from your grandmother. So to speak.”

“ _Grandmother_ ,” Sam imitated. “Your trash talk needs serious work, and so does your—”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Sheppard, before sucking him down like a Jeremiah Weed fireball at a goddamn USO afterparty, and Sam tangled his fingers in John’s hair and just let him swallow.

•

Sheppard also seemed to be drinking less, although Sam had sat through enough twelve-step groups to know it wasn’t any of his business. Whatever his consumption habits in private, he didn’t drink around Sam, his apartment didn’t have that musty boozy smell that Sam associated with grounded alcoholic pilots, and he never drunk-texted, or showed up at Sam’s place inebriated. He still smoked, but Sam didn’t mind, as long as he didn’t do it inside. Overall Sheppard was alarmingly well-bred without being a snob, and Sam couldn’t quite figure out how he’d gotten this lucky in Houston, Texas, where he’d pretty much counted on not being able to date at all. It was worse than inconvenient, to be honest, because there was already an end in sight, which was John being sufficiently rehabilitated to go back to his command post; they just didn’t know when that would be, and by silent, mutual agreement, never spoke of it.

Sam finally figured out how to get John to answer questions, though; it turned out to be first thing in the morning, after he’d come back from swimming, and was loose-limbed, sun-kissed, and relaxed. He responded particularly well to quid pro quo, and was a good listener. So Sam willingly gave it up, in order to extort from him a great deal of useful information.

Including such handy blackmail material as his callsign.

“Shep, mostly,” John said evasively. “And a couple different ones.”

“Let me guess, the first one was unflattering. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna make fun of you if your callsign wasn’t cool. If it was something like Spanky, or Booger. Wait—was it Booger?”

He could see Sheppard trying to summon the CO look, but it wasn’t working. “Keebler.”

Sam thought he would never stop laughing. After a long time he choked out, “At least it wasn’t Hairgel,” forcing John to go after him with one of the pillows. But Sam could hold his breath for a long time.

John let him up, and Sam composed himself. “Tell me the next one was better.”

Sheppard sighed, shoulders slumped in resignation: “Q-Tip.”

Sam exploded again. When he could next talk, he rolled over, facing Sheppard, and demanded, still breathless, “What is with you and the hair, just cut it—”

“Because that doesn’t help, it’s even worse when it’s shorter!”

Sam’s cheekbones hurt. “There’s no way that’s possible.”

“Anyway it’s not about the hair, okay, Jesus. It’s because when you use a Q-tip you’re, you know. Supposed to stop, when there’s—when you feel resistance. And I guess I don’t. Know when to.”

A stab of something serious lanced through Sam, and he sat up, running a hand over his beard. “In case you were wondering? That’s why you don’t get to decide when we fuck.”

“Fine,” John said, not meeting his eyes. “What about yours, anyway?”

“My hair?”

“Your callsign _._ Or do people who fly around in bird costumes not get those.”

“People in _what_ now?”

“Okay, okay, extremely cool experimental tech including a strapped-on jetpack and some kind of carbon-fiber maneuverable wing. But apparently _someone_ won’t take me _up_ in his, so the least you can do is tell me your callsign. If you had one.”

“Oh I had one alright. Riley was Buzzard, because he was a Southerner; I was Falcon, even back then, but most of the guys called me Snap.”

“Snap? Like…snapping them up?” Sheppard asked. “And while we’re on the subject, just how exactly do you exfil hundreds of wounded and keep your program classified, anyway. Didn’t they notice they were being yanked into the sky and carried to safety by flying medics?”

Sam laughed. “Ketamine’s a hell of a drug. No, Snap’s been my nickname since I was a kid—Dad called me that, and it kinda stuck. Guess I lost my temper pretty easy.”

John looked skeptical, and Sam was fine with that. He’d worked hard to relearn what to do with anger, in therapy and with Riley, who early on specialized in getting him all spooled up.

Eventually he told Sheppard more about Riley, too, in the process of learning more about the Pegasus Galaxy and its human population (that one was never going to stop being weird), about Sheppard’s record in Afghanistan and Iraq, his failed marriage to Nancy, and his not-so-great relationship with his younger brother Dave. About why Sheppard switched to helos from fighter jets, not just because he hated delivering payloads (“the geometry takes up every part of your brain—it’s like spinning plates on both hands. While reciting the alphabet backwards. In Urdu”).

And Sam didn’t just tell him about Riley—he told John things he hadn’t told anyone _since_ Riley. How Paul Wilson, despite being not just an AME minister but a deacon, had also been one hell of a hypocrite, with another family in another state (“and Sarah says she wouldn’t be surprised if someone else turns up”). How Sam had always known something was off. How Darlene had blossomed, quietly, after Paul’s death; cooked and cleaned and fretted less, and smiled more.

“We never said it, but Mama and I both knew we were better off. I don’t think she knew what all he was up to, but she knew enough. And he and I fought like crazy—fought over everything, right up until the end. Last day I had with him, we were arguing doctrine. Soteriology, if you can believe that. Fighting like we were going to finally figure out something theologians haven’t solved in centuries.”

“I wasn’t even raised Catholic enough to know what that is,” John admitted. They were down by the boardwalk, but for once John wasn’t swimming. He and Sam were just hanging out after brunch, sitting at the end of the pier, legs dangling above the water. It was one of John’s favorite places, and Sam had an idea or two about why.

“Just a fancy word for salvation. Who gets in, who doesn’t. At least there should be a purgatory. Doesn’t make any sense that a god who loves creation would condemn it to eternal perdition.”

“Perdition,” John echoed.

“Preacher’s kid,” said Sam, terse. “I didn’t just go to Sunday school, I taught it.”

“Past tense?”

“Yeah, well,” Sam said, like that was any kind of answer. He’d already said too much.

“Your mom.”

Sam looked out over the choppy gray water, not quite seeing it. “Harlem in the seventies and eighties was rough. _Urban decay_ doesn’t cover it; that shit was a war zone. Beautiful, vibrant, but totally fucked. Everyone left after the riots in the sixties, even black people.”

He could feel John looking at him, head at an angle.

“My dad had that missionary zeal, man. Gonna get everyone saved or die trying. Mama was just trying to keep us in a decent neighborhood, started taking night classes at City College. Mugger, on her way home—a block from our apartment. I was eighteen. Enlisted right out of high school.”

“Mine, too,” was all Sheppard said in reply. “Dead, I mean—they weren’t murdered, Jesus, that’s a whole other level of—”

“Racist bullshit, yeah.” Sam cleared his throat. “When did you lose yours?”

“Mom when I was a kid, Dad a few years ago. He had a heart attack, but she—it was pills, probably. We never talked about it.” He shrugged one shoulder to loosen it; Sam heard it pop even over the sound of the waves.

“Your family know about you?”

“About—that I’m—that I like men?”

“Well, I meant the serves-in-another-galaxy part, but sure.”

“Not—no. I don’t think so. Maybe. Dad and I never got along even well enough to argue. He wanted someone more like Dave: Harvard, MBA, wife, kids. I couldn’t ever—be that.”

“I’m not sure _anyone_ could be that, babe.”

John shook his head. “I couldn’t even be whatever is it I am.”

A line of five brown pelicans glided past, a few inches above the surf where it crested and was clear, and they could scan the water for fish. When Sam turned to look at his profile, in the last of the light he could see the lines beneath Sheppard’s eyes, and at their corners: etched creases, written deeply in the skin like weariness itself, like a visible record of flight hours logged. Sam didn’t know how to take them away, didn’t know if they could be taken away; maybe he kind of liked that. He thought, with a sudden sharp pang in his chest, that Sheppard was more to him now than someone desirable, more than someone he wanted to have broken open underneath him—he was a friend, someone Sam trusted; and he wasn’t sure when or how that had happened, but he thought he’d better find out if John actually felt that way, too. Later, though. Not today. He reached over to cover Sheppard’s hand with his, and John twisted his hand palm-up instead and interlaced their fingers, and squeezed once. Then they just sat there together, for a long moment, watching the pelicans skim over the water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for consensual BSDM activities include bondage, light slapping, feminization/humiliation, orgasm denial/edging, gagging, hairpulling, nipple torture, and a fair amount of Air Force trash talk (and ensuing laughter).
> 
> I felt like throwing in one more chapter before the next installment of five, so happy Friday night! I'm going to a Harry Potter singles party wearing a dark gray shirt and an emerald green necktie, so wish me luck! Love you bundles.


	23. Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next five chapters are pretty angsty, so I suggest waiting until you can read them all at once, so you don't have to stop in an uncomfortable place (also, remember that even though this looks like MCD, no one really ever dies in the Pegasus Galaxy). Please take care of yourself, for I love you. <3

Sheppard wasn’t great at the best of times with email, which all of Atlantis knew, but since he’d last written Zelenka, it was building up again, badly. He now had unanswered messages from Stackhouse (three), Lorne (at least a dozen), Mehta (he’d stopped counting), Cadman (two), Carter (two), Carson (four), Zelenka (six, the last one asking Sheppard to call him, although he didn’t even know how he was supposed to do that, something called an app); there was even email from O’Neill (only one, subject line reading “have you melted yet you bonehead n/m”). He was still too disoriented to trust himself to write even short answers, like a reasonable human being, so he just let his auto-reply respond. Something about this thing with Sam had him spooled up in a different way, feeling like he was about to hook it at any second, but he wasn’t even sure what exactly was wrong with any of it. Just a crawling feeling up the back of his neck, but he’d learned to pay attention to that, over the last decade especially.

He was leaving rehab, wrung out and shaky as always, when the receptionist called him back in. He figured she was just going to make him stand there as usual while she set up his appointments for the next week, so he didn’t see it coming when she handed him a sheaf of paperwork and told him in a cheerful voice to send them a postcard for their “Success Stories!” bulletin board, once he got back to base. It had been sixteen weeks, and apparently that was some kind of benchmark point and, also, the end of his need for PT. It was time to, quote, discuss his options with his personal physician. So the receptionist had given him records to take with him, and his con leave was officially over, and now he stood in the hallway looking at a tangle of medical jargon and codes, head swimming, wishing he could talk to Carson or even Keller.

He stood just outside the double glass doors and stared at the form on top as though he could maybe make it mean something different if he looked at it long enough:

> _History of radical unilateral nephrectomy is disqualifying. [Z90.5]_  
>  _History of major avulsion and stellate laceration of spleen is not disqualifying. [S36.032A]_  
>  _History of burn of third degree of unspecified site of right lower limb is not disqualifying. [T24.301A]_  
>  _History of surgical correction of knee ligaments is disqualifying as symptomatic and unstable. [P81.4]_  
>  _Current unspecified internal derangement of the knee is disqualifying. [M23.90]_  
>  _Current symptomatic medial and lateral collateral ligament injury are disqualifying. [S83.411S, 421S]_  
>  _Current symptomatic medial and lateral meniscal injury are disqualifying. [S83.231S, 271S]_  
>  _Current symptomatic injury of abductor muscle, fascia and tendon of hip is disqualifying. [S76.09]_  
>  _Current hip joint ranges of motion less than the measurements listed below are disqualifying—_

Sheppard stopped reading. He wasn’t completely sure about all the vocabulary, but _symptomatic, unstable_ , and _derangement_ all sounded about right. And especially clear: _disqualifying_. It all added up to taco: he was never going up again, he was grounded for life, on Earth, anyway. And he couldn’t go back to Atlantis. Not without—he couldn’t. But he also couldn’t stay here.

Kate Heightmeyer had once told him it was called a double-bind, in psychology: you couldn’t do x because of y, but you also couldn’t do y because of x, yet x and y were the only two options, and you had to pick one. In the Pegasus Galaxy, that was just called every other Tuesday, and Rodney McKay had a third PhD in outwitting them. This was a pretty bad one, though. And he didn’t have Rodney to help solve it, which made the whole thing even more painfully ironic.

He stood there for a long time, leaning on his cane, stapled sheets of paper half-crumpled in the other hand. Then he moved over to an ugly beige trash can with a swinging lid, underneath a wall-mounted hand-sanitizer dispenser and a poster that said, in bright blue letters, COVER YOUR MOUTH WITH YOUR ELBOW WHEN YOU COUGH. He dropped the papers into the trash can, leaned his cane against the wall, and walked, very deliberately, away.

•

Things with Dr. Kaur had been low-key for the most part, which he hadn’t expected from therapy, especially after their first couple of visits had felt like being belt-sanded. But she’d seemed to lighten up after that, and he told her a lot about Iraq and Afghanistan, and even a little about Sam, and his uneasy feeling. (“I just don’t see where it’s going to go,” was what he’d said to Kaur, who looked at him through the top part of her glasses and suggested that maybe it was okay not to know that right now.)

Today he’d been planning to spin some kind of filler about his brother, maybe his uneventful working relationship with Mehta and Lorne, but now he was on tilt. Kaur could tell the second he walked through the door; he knew because she took off her glasses, which always meant she was going to ask him a bunch of questions he didn’t want to answer.

“You’re not using your cane,” she said, which was her way of conducting an interrogation: presenting him with innocuous-seeming statements of fact, and then waiting for him to either confirm or deny them.

“Nope,” Sheppard said. He was careful sitting down, kept his leg straight from habit; he could be careful. He’d been questioned by _Wraith queens_ , goddammit. He didn’t have to tell her shit.

“That must feel like an improvement.”

“I guess.”

She somehow radiated interest and concern and disbelief, all without the usual human expressions, like tilting her head or narrowing her eyes. If Kaur ever got bored with cross-examining punchy vets, she could be a world-class poker player.

“My con leave’s over,” he heard himself saying, and flinched.

“You’re done with rehab.”

“Apparently I’m as good as I’m going to get.” Maybe SG-1 had some sarcophagus they could put him inside, for an additional tune-up. Maybe they could fix it so he never had to get out again.

“I can imagine you have a lot of different feelings about that.”

“I guess,” he said again. Kaur was wearing a long gray cardigan that reached almost to the floor, which made him think, irrelevantly, of that song by Cake, which made him think of Dana Scully. He liked women; had loved them, been loved by a few. Amy, Courtney, Aziz. Nancy. Teyla. He wasn’t gay.

She waited, which was never a good sign. But he had her figured out by now. She wasn’t a threat.

“A lot of career officers might think about getting out, at such a moment,” she said, eventually.

Sheppard shook his head. “Not really an option. Not for me.”

“You’re very committed to your post.”

“Something like that.” _It’s a city, and I belong to it. It picked me. I’ll die defending it._

“There are people there about whom you care very deeply.” God, he hated psychiatrists. Why were they so hell-for-leather about stating the obvious?

“It’s my job,” he said, shortly.

“And yet.” She had a copy of the _Desiderata_ on her desk, a little tilted plaque with rainbow calligraphy. If he looked at it, in the dim lighting he could just make out the familiar words: _You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here._ His mom had always kept a copy in her bedroom, because of course his parents had separate bedrooms, and he had a sudden, weirdly specific memory of sitting in her lap and playing with her tennis bracelet, turning it in the light so its diamonds made sparkles on the wall. “You’ve made a friend here, and that’s also a kind of commitment.”

“It’s not—” _like that_ , he tried to say, but his throat closed up halfway through the sentence, and he swallowed convulsively. They weren’t _committed_ , Sam wasn’t his—

“You didn’t expect to meet Sam, but you have a real connection with him,” she went on, as if agreeing with something he’d managed to say.

“We don’t,” he started, but again couldn’t get any farther.

 _Double-bind. You can’t stay on Earth, because you don’t belong here; you have to go back to Atlantis, because you have to be in Atlantis; but you can’t go back to Atlantis, because Rodney’s not there; but you can’t stay here, because you’re falling in love with_ —Jesus Christ.

“John, when we met, you mentioned the accident in which you were injured. You said you were always supposed to be first through the door.”

Fuck, he’d been wrong about her. She wasn’t lightening up as time went on; she still went straight for the jugular. He pressed his palms against his thighs, hard, to stop the shaking. It had become a habit, and he didn’t know when, and it made him irrationally angry.

“Of course—they’re my team. I always take point.” Him and Teyla flanking Rodney, Ronon on their six. Sure, Lorne or Beckett, too, sometimes. Ford, the first year. Cadman or Keller occasionally, after Teyla left. But nothing had ever felt as right as AR-1, as the four of them.

He wasn’t fucking doing this. He stared intently at the pattern of her throw rug, half-covering up the institutional tile. He couldn’t have told you what color it was if you’d put a gun to his head. He clenched his jaw to keep from speaking.

Outside her office door John could hear a toilet flush, a door slam, something vague buzz across the intercom. The inside of his mouth felt burned and dry. He sort of hated her.

“I know it was an accident, okay,” he heard himself saying, through gritted teeth. “But we’d gotten through so much already. Like, stupid shit, _crazy_ shit—we shouldn’t have even survived half of it, but somehow we always did.”

“You must have started to feel like you could survive anything,” Kaur said, in that soft dry voice.

 _Invulnerable!_ sang Rodney, gleefully, in his head. “If we had enough time, sure. And I always made sure—we figured out everything on the fly, that’s what we were best at. It was, it was the whole point, it’s what we did. Why they chose us, why we stayed there. We _were_ the—”

 _We_ were _the city. He and I, we ran a city together and no one else could do what we did._

If he concentrated very hard, he could tell that the rug was a warm color against the ugly gray-flecked tile. Maybe red. “Ten years is a long time,” said Kaur neutrally.

“Long enough to get careless?” he shot back at her. “Is that what you’re saying? Because you’re wrong.”

There was another gaping pause during which Kaur didn’t move or make a sound, just listened in his general direction. It was exhausting, it gave him nothing to work with, so he wound up talking.

She was too good at her job. He thought some more about hating her.

“You don’t seem like the careless type, John,” she said, after a long time, watching him closely.

 _Oh my god_ , he thought, involuntarily flashing onto every single risky thing he’d ever done. He laughed a little, wildly, then felt like he had to explain that. “Believe me, I can be plenty reckless. But my people aren’t—that’s not even—”

“No one is expendable, except you,” she said.

He found himself nodding fiercely. “And these people are, they were.” He couldn’t breathe. _The best. My friends._

“But this one time, you couldn’t keep them all safe.” She was a teddy bear with a chainsaw.

He wasn’t fucking doing this. He wasn’t. As if from a great distance he stared down at the pale strip of skin on his wrist.

•

Whatever had happened with the gate and the ZP2M that night—which they were probably never going to be able to figure out completely, without Rodney—had been unforeseeable in every way. Except that they should have foreseen it. They _always_ figured shit out, sometimes with seconds to spare, but they always did. He bought Rodney time, that was his job: buy him time, make sure he had a toolkit and MREs and was safe and unharmed; and then Rodney, and Zelenka and the others, they figured it out.

The gateroom had been nearly empty. It was the end of the third shift, everyone was tired, and John should have kicked them all out and gone to bed himself, except something kept him in there, pacing around the temporary consoles on the gateroom floor, watching McKay and Radek a little nervously as they worked.

“Will you just _hand me the transceiver_ ,” Rodney had hissed at Zelenka, who muttered something in reply, holding the black palm-sized rectangle behind him out of Rodney’s reach, eyes flashing behind his glasses, hair demented, completely focused on the screen in front of him.

“When I am finished with it, yes, Rodney, I will give it to you. But not before.”

“ _Fine_ ,” huffed Rodney, turning back to one of his own half-dozen laptops, “and may you and it and your _hopelessly inferior_ ability to calculate multivariate multiple regressions all enjoy a long and happy life together, and obviously by ‘long’ I mean sometime in the next thirty seconds when you realize you can’t actually do them without my help, because you’re missing a crucial predictor variable.”

“Drž hubu, kámo,” said Zelenka, still not looking up, and after ten years Sheppard had worked out just enough Czech to be impressed by its rudeness.

He tried to stop hovering, told himself to leave and go to the mess for coffee, to go to bed. But the ZP2M was there on a cart, glowing innocently to itself (a soft white-violet, unlike the usual dull gold Tiffany-lamp color), and as far as they were all concerned it was the visual equivalent of a roast suckling pig, a freshly waxed surfboard, a three-tier chocolate cake, a perfect newborn baby.

The day Rodney had told them about it, John actually thought Teyla had been more excited than when Torren was born. As Rodney had sketched the outline of what he thought he could do, at that morning’s senior staff briefing, everyone in the room had more or less stopped breathing and was looking at Rodney like he’d told them he could grow new heads at will. Albeit for a small fee. Well, roughly an eight-figure one. Carter was there, having brought the _George Hammond_ in for a personnel run, and probably she was the only one who could really wrap her head around the theoretical physics Rodney was spouting, at an even-for-him hectic pace.

“It’s just that the equations have taken me a bit to work out. Not,” he added hastily, eyes sparkling, “that this was in _any way_ whatsoever _my_ fault, once we finally stopped with the incessant emergencies and the, you know, flying back and forth between galaxies and the _moon_ and whatnot—without all the constant panicking and last-minute hysterical problem-solving, my requirements were quite modest actually. In the end I only needed sixteen months during which we didn’t have constant drama, just moderate _continual_ drama, more along the lines of ‘Rodney we’re flooding again in section seven’ as opposed to ‘help help, there are hideous green space vampires with sucky-hands who are going to drain us all until we look like raisins’—so you see, once I finally had time to _focus—_ ”

“We’re optimistic you’ll tell us, too, perhaps even someday soon, Dr. McKay,” Woolsey had said firmly, and Rodney blinked and actually stopped long enough to draw in a breath. John watched, fascinated; by this point, he knew Rodney well enough to _see_ him adjusting his mental focal length.

“Yes, well, so—with the equations finished, the rest was straightforward. It turns out that we needed a form of highly enriched naquadria, not unlike the much more primitive earth-based attempts to increase the fissile properties of uranium—although separating naquadria isotopes via diffusion was more or less impossible, if you’re trying to keep them stable, and, this part is actually pretty impressive: instead of ion cyclotron resonance, we found that the only way around it is to—”

“Rodney,” said Carter.

“—right, so: heavily enriched naquadria. And once we could spend some quality time with the container’s polymers, it turns out that there are equations in condensed matter theory that apply to creating that stability—we didn’t use the typical ZPM crystalline structure, but printed a container ourselves, more like—well, it probably won’t make any sense to this crowd, but suffice it to say we actually combined protein thermodynamics—folding polypeptides—with, get this: _electroceramics_.”

Rodney paused, clearly expecting appreciation, and John could almost see the note at the bottom of the PowerPoint slide: _[wait for applause]._ None forthcoming, after an almost undetectable interval he hurried on ahead. “And that wasn’t even the most spectacular part—if you think even for half a _second_ about the structure of the Jaffa Ma’tok staff, how it contains highly volatile liquid naquadria without either losing power or destabilizing—well, once we _finally_ wrested one from Teal’c, who frankly seems to prefer running around _murdering_ people with it to actually letting people study it, then it was only a matter of weeks before I was able to determine how exactly it—”

“Rodney,” repeated Carter, without changing her inflection.

“—and after that _it was completely possible._ Thus, Lanteans, I give you: the Zero Point Two Module.”

And that was how Sheppard knew Rodney was happy, because he actually shut up, and just stood there beaming, not even pointing or yelling, just weaving on his feet slightly and flushed a little, like he got when he’d fallen asleep on his face at his desk. Sheppard wondered if he’d remembered to go back to the apartment he shared with Keller, or if he’d slept in the lab, or if he’d even slept at all.

(Once, not long after the wedding, he’d found Rodney vaguely lost in the region of their old quarters, and without giving him shit about it he’d just taken him by the elbow, Rodney babbling about deuterium and nanostructured semiconductors—possibly relevant to the project under discussion, come to think of it—and steered him back to his and Keller’s new room, suggesting under his breath to a bleary, still-half-asleep Jennifer that she should try to get a PB&J and some water into Rodney if she didn’t want him to be an absolute terror in the morning. There had also been several years during which John had gotten in the habit of keeping those little UHT cartons of organic chocolate milk in his top desk drawer. Neither of them ever said anything about it, just every six months Sheppard would order another case for the supply run, and silently replace them.)

Rodney’s revelation induced an impromptu mid-morning party in the mess that had included not only the aforementioned cartons of chocolate milk (which Ronon stole shamelessly, almost straight out of Rodney’s hands) but also something flat and square and frosted that seemed to be like a cookie, except made out of beet sugar from M3X-737, and crumbly. Zelenka and Carter were joyously yelling equations back and forth, interrupting, finishing each other’s sentences, using one of the tabletops as their whiteboard; Ronon was stalking around the room with Torren held up squealing over his head, making various puddlejumper sounds, while Rodney had pink powder dusting his upper lip and he and Teyla leaned their foreheads together, outright giggling with sheer relief.

After which John hadn’t seen McKay for over a week, because everybody was suddenly working too hard. Until the evening the three of them were in the gateroom together, Rodney and Zelenka alternately testing the ZP2M’s power fluctuations with various gate settings and then recalibrating them, over and over again, while at the same time trying to finalize adjustments to their 3D-printed folded-peptide-protein-ceramic housing, making sure it stayed stable through normal usage-related fluctuations and could securely contain the fancy ultra-heavy increased-isotopes liquid naquadria. Apparently they needed to do this before they could actually install the ZP2M in the control room to start testing the shields, and then see if they could power the city; with the Wraith comfortably fed, it wasn’t like they had a deadline, and McKay insisted that for once he wanted to do something mathematically accurate, instead of held together with duct tape and patches of solder and sheer terror.

(John understood the math behind it, okay; he wasn’t _stupid_. His brain just needed to prioritize all of its available spare room for the forty tiny dials of an F-302 cockpit, with their endless minute streams of information; for remembering which planets were the ones where they wanted you to marry their virgins _before_ they ate you, as opposed to _after;_ or for recalling Russian patronymics, or the names of all the new NFL first-draft picks, or what each of Rodney’s various lopsided faces meant.)

In the end, though, he was just too tired. He leaned against the bulkhead, yawning. McKay wouldn’t stop cursing and ranting and elaborating on some long-running feud he and Zelenka had been having for years, about superconductivity and vortex lattices, and not understanding that none of them cared about that, they just wanted the city which had become their home not to sink into the ocean and drown them all; and to have functional shields when some new species showed up in its version of hiveships, raining hell down on them. And for the gate to work more or less accurately, most of the time. Also at some point the jumpers were going to need to recharge. Privately, John had long been thinking about how to make one of the larger desalination tanks into a wave pool.

“Be useful, hold this,” Rodney had snapped, turning to John and shoving the transceiver at him almost as soon as Radek had handed it over, which perplexed John, who tried to give it back.

“No, I just need—look, stand _right here_ ,” and McKay had grabbed his hips and steered him where he wanted him, positioning him some specific distance away from both gate and ZP2M, then moving to stand inside the triangulated area he’d just created, punching at his tablet furiously.

Sheppard stood there awkwardly holding the transceiver, wondering how long he had to be there and if he could just put the thing on the floor and leave, or at least sit down while Rodney did whatever it was he was doing. He tried to remember the last time he’d slept in a bed.

“McKay,” said Zelenka, almost gently, “We can do this tomorrow. It’s late and Colonel Sheppard has other things to do besides pretend to be an away team.”

“No,” said Rodney, without looking up. “It’ll just take a minute and then we’ll know the exact frequencies. I don’t want to use a stronger EMP than necessary, this isn’t fucking _Bluetooth_.” Zelenka shrugged, pushed his glasses back up onto his nose, and headed up the steps to the control room.

“EMP?” Sheppard said, suddenly paying attention.

“Not now,” said Rodney, abstractedly, then to Zelenka: “Sending coordinates. If you can fit the fifth and sixth variables into the mixed boundary conditions, you should be able to use—”

“I thought we said modified Neumann,” objected Zelenka, looking over the tops of his glasses.

“How _dare_ you,” Rodney said, gaping up at him. “The gradient of the solution has to be _unique_ , what about this situation does not scream _unique_ to you—” He took a step forward, and then it all happened so fast.

It all happened so fast. John had plenty of time, agonizing amounts of time, to anatomize it later, pull it apart into its separate components over the hours (days, weeks, months) that followed; but the entire thing had taken five seconds at most, maybe four. Maybe three. It all happened so fast.

Rodney took a step forward. The instant he was outside the triangular space, a blinding arc of purple-white light lashed out from the top of the new ZPM and connected solidly with the transceiver, which John sensibly dropped—or more accurately, had torn out of his grip, his entire body stunned by the current, both palms scorched. (Later, the first-degree burns would be the least of his damage.)

Before the piece of equipment could even clatter to the floor, the arc broadened and swung wide, also ripping McKay’s tablet out of his hands and sending him stumbling back toward the gate. Everything happened so fast.

(John wasn’t aware until later that it had also taken a slice out of his side, starting at the collarbone and skipping down along his ribs and around to his kidney; had been too numb to care when Carson pulled off the scorched remnants of his jacket and found the inside sticky with blood.)

He dove, moving on pure instinct, grabbing for McKay and catching at the sleeve of his uniform jacket, yanking it half-off him as momentum kept Rodney staggering backward toward the gate, except there was nothing there, nothing dialed, no wormhole, just the empty ring. And then the beam from the ZP2M, striking the inner ring, with hot sparks and heavy soft globules of metal being flung wide, hitting the gateroom floor with hissing sounds, on fire around them, it happened so fast.

It had happened so fast, the inner ring lit up like a planetarium, constellations flickering, and the sound of the gate engaging, it all happened so fast and probably would have killed them both if Rodney hadn’t twisted in his grasp and somehow shoved John back and out of the way, the asshole, it happened so fast that John fell and skidded helpless on one hip across a sudden liquid spill of whatever-the-fuck-it-was, radioactive and scalding, molten naquadria, but sliding in the _wrong direction_ , away from Rodney, the cuff of Rodney’s jacket twisted out of his clenched fingers, another arc of light flashed out, striking him in the hip and knocking him backward, him slamming into the foot of the stairwell so hard everything went black for a second, and then trying to scramble to his hands and knees, burns be damned, something wrong with his knee, half-crawling when his leg went out from under him, reaching out uselessly and shouting as McKay kept reeling backward, too fast and overbalancing toward the gate but _it wasn’t even dialed_ , he should have just fallen through it and come out the other side, except the beam raking across the gate’s inner ring kept arcing downward in a spray of jagged red metal-saw sparks, and it too should have just shot through and burned the gateroom wall, but instead when it dropped off the metal of the gate and entered the ring itself Sheppard heard the wet rushing sound of the unstable vortex, him flat on his stomach in front of it, flinging up one arm instinctively as it flooded out and stayed there, longer than usual, seemingly forever, and then abruptly the vortex shuddered and just fell back in on itself like always, collapsed back into bleak emptiness, but leaving no event horizon, no shimmering surface, nothing, _it had all happened so fast_. And then there was no sound except a quiet sizzling, those dripping clots of naquadria hitting the floor and bursting into quiet blue flame. John tried to turn over and get up again, palms slipping in the blood pooling on the floor, blind with pain, still too stunned to realize his BDUs were burned off all down one side, the scorched smell of metal and cloth and skin, Zelenka running down the steps shouting his name, hands on him, trying to turn him over, his own hoarse shout ringing in his ears, it had all happened so fast, fighting Zelenka, throwing elbows to block him and struggling to stand up despite his legs having gone numb, he couldn’t feel either of them, trying to move toward the gate, Rodney should _still be there—_

Because John should have been the one to go through. He was always first, even if they were just testing something. If he’d pulled Rodney out of the way John would be dead, and Rodney would still be alive, and Atlantis would still be Atlantis. It wouldn’t even be a big deal—other people had the gene now, the city didn’t need him, not really. He didn’t care about being dead; that’s why he’d started flying that payload into the fucking superhive the first time. He hadn’t cared. Until he’d heard McKay’s voice on the radio, urgent and impatient, and it had been—not a way out, just a reminder.

That for the time being there were things he did still care about, people he still had to take care of, had to keep safe. Ronon and Teyla, Carson and Radek. And Rodney. Always Rodney.

It was supposed to be John. It had happened so fast. It should have been him. He always went first. It was supposed to be him.

“No wonder, Sheppard,” said Kaur softly. “No wonder.” John looked up, confused. He didn’t know when he’d stopped speaking, what he’d said, how long they’d been sitting there.

She reached for her tissue box and handed it to him. He realized both their faces were wet.


	24. Zero

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings at the end. Take care of yourselves, my petals!

Sheppard drove. He could barely see, except through a circle right in front of him, everything reduced, constricted down to tunnel vision like the worst parts of a furball, those airless lightless moments where you just flew by the seat of your fucking pants. He’d been instrument rated so long he could drive all but blind, he just needed the twenty feet of road in front of him, even going ninety, ninety-five.

He’d lied to Kaur, done his best to reassure her that he was fine, though he was a terrible liar; had even managed his most deliberately charming smile, the lazy lopsided one, and held it all the way out of the building, even through getting a new prescription filled and making a follow-up appointment. Then, in the parking garage, he’d punched a concrete column. He split all the knuckles on his right hand, barely managing to get inside the car and turn the keys before he broke bones, or worse. He wanted to shoot something, to scream. He drove.

Some animal instinct pulled him south along the interstate, the road reeling him down its length, in the part of his mind that wasn’t chanting _it should have been me, it should have been me, it was supposed to be me_ , he knew he was headed for the coast, only dimly aware of it when he crossed a long causeway over what looked like a shipping channel. Brown pelicans flew beside it in formation, level with the Camaro, and long flat barges passed underneath the spillway, but he couldn’t really see them, couldn’t quite focus on anything but the yellow center stripe, until eventually the highway gave way to an avenue, with palm trees down the middle, and the oversaturated air through the rolled-down window became even more humid. It started to spit rain, cold needle-like droplets that stung his face. _Fuck it_ , he thought, so blank with a strange flat anger it felt like nothing inside him, like booming empty space. He didn’t know what that meant, or to whom he was speaking, just: _fuck it, it’s over, I can’t do this anymore, fuck it, I’m done, fuck it all._

He ran out of land, at some point. There was a sloping tall concrete seawall down to the water, and the sun was going down, and his arms and hands hurt when he breathed. He parked and sat there for a long time, until it was dark.

A very old unopened bottle of whiskey was in the trunk, but when he unscrewed the cap it smelled fine, and anyway it didn’t matter. He downed a third of it at once, drinking fast, like it was part of some arcane hazing ritual, and had to lean against the Camaro for a minute and just breathe and swallow, trying to keep it from coming straight back up.

The rain fell harder, soaked through his clothes, unexpectedly cold. No other cars were on the seawall, in either direction. He slugged back another belt and started to walk down a long gray granite jetty, rocks jagged and slick with spray; made it nearly to the surfline and then slid off, half-falling, banging his hip and elbows on the way down. The bottle hit a rock and the bottom of it cracked, but didn’t break. He lay on the wet sand for a minute, then sat up.

“Jesus H. Christ on a cracker,” swore Rodney. “Sometimes I could literally kill you.”

“Got you covered there, buddy,” John said, and started to unlace his boots. Rain dripped into his eyes and he wiped the hair off his forehead with one palm, and drank again.

“Are you _kidding_ me right now.”

“Never more serious.” The last word was hard to say. His lips had started to go numb.

“So, what, _this_ is your great plan? Your latest brilliant idea? Colonel, your towering intellect amazes me sometimes. I’m not sure why you’re not already a brigadier general, with battle strategy like this. _Kill_ yourself? Admittedly there were many times I wanted to do exactly that, but you don’t get to just—”

“You don’t know,” John said, and pulled off one of his boots, which was somehow full of water. “You have no idea.”

“Oh really, colonel? I have no idea? Have you forgotten being Carson Beckett’s fucking _pallbearers?_ ”

“It’s not like that—would you just. Just shut up for a second.” He frowned at a knotted lace, then stood up to kick the boot off anyway. He fell over, scraped both palms raw on the sand, and barely rescued the bottle in time. There was blood from somewhere—his knuckles, maybe, or a sharp-edged shell. They crunched everywhere underneath him, delicate tiny dots of white on the wet sand; everywhere he stepped, he was crushing something, killing something.

“Don’t tell me what it’s fucking like—and Elizabeth? What about Elizabeth?!”

_You’re hopeless_ , John thought, taking another drink, then another. He wasn’t sure which of them he meant. If Rodney didn’t understand now, he never would, and John couldn’t make him. “Don’t you—don’t bring her into this.”

“But you loved her—I know you did, don’t bother denying it. We both did.”

“That was different,” he said. “You were different.” He looked offshore, blinking back rain and trying to see the wave pattern. It was really dark. There was a tiny blurred red light far in the distance; maybe a tanker, or a rig. He had to use both hands to stand up, and nearly went down again.

“But you survived. You always survive, John. And so, what, _now_ you’re taking the Pier 14 option?”

Pier 14 was an inside joke. For some reason, the Ancients liked the number thirteen; maybe it meant good luck to them, or had some weird religious significance, but a lot of their stuff came in thirteens, and some of the programming even revolved around a base-thirteen radix, which had never even slowed Rodney down, but John heard Zelenka mutter complaints in Czech about it, and the more superstitious of the Marines renamed things all the time. So there wasn’t a fourteenth pier; but Miko and Radek had a running gag about jumping off the end of it, if things ever got too bad.

“I can’t do it anymore, Rodney,” he said, his voice sounding far away to his own ears.

“Well unfortunately for you, colonel, that’s not an option,” Rodney snapped. “Not after everything we’ve been through. You don’t get to quit. And I hope you can feel it, by the way, because I’m slapping you in the fucking face as hard as I can right now. You _don’t get to quit_ , you asshole.”

_Why are you swearing_ , John thought, too tired to say it out loud. _You’re Canadian, you never swear_.

“Yes, brilliantly observed, but in case it hadn’t escaped your notice, I’m also fucking _dead_ ,” Rodney said, his voice tight. “I think I’m entitled to some goddamn cursing, seeing as how you’re apparently planning to drown yourself.”

_Planning_ wasn’t really the word for it, but John felt too tired to argue. “Okay, Rodney,” he said, as he had so many times in his life, and took another pull off what was left in the bottle, squinting at the surf. It wasn’t hard to spot the rip, at all, even drunk and in the dark. There was a solid clear line of frothy chop, and then about a twenty-foot wide swath where the waves didn’t break over, but were sucked back under by the current, leaving only a few bubbles. It looked like it went out a long way, too; island rips usually did.

“No more double-bind,” he said. “I return my ticket.” _Dostoyevsky_ , he thought, and laughed.

“You do not get to to do this shit, colonel! Don’t you fucking _dare—_ ”

He struggled out of his wet BDUs, shivering a little; the new bottle of Prazosin fell out of his pocket, and he thought about washing down a few, in case; but for some reason he just took one, like he did every night, out of habit. He slugged back the rest of the whiskey, dropped the bottle onto the sand, and waded out. The water was warmer on his thighs than the cold rain, but not by much. He trailed his hands along the creamy tops of the waves, unable to feel his fingertips, until it was too deep to walk and he started to swim, t-shirt billowing around him in the water. Tangles of seaweed brushed against his legs, caught for a moment, moved on.

The first wave caught him full in the face; he spat out a mouthful on instinct, but that was stupid, he told himself, and he deliberately swallowed the next one, briny and thick. All of this was stupid, but so was he. He’d let Rodney fucking die, and was never going to hear the end of it, the end of it would never come, that torn-up feeling in his chest at the bottom of every breath was just going to go on and on and on and the only way out, the only way to make it stop, was to stop breathing.

He was a strong swimmer, but he was drunk, and tired, and the rip dragged him out fast. And he helped the best he could, struck out for the edge of the water with a slow relentless crawl.

“What about me? Have you thought of that? If I’m in here, and you die, Sheppard, what’s going to happen to me?” Rodney demanded.

_It’s a trick, he’s trying to trick me_. “Fuck off,” John said, and got another mouthful of salt water.

“Look, you don’t have to do this, John. You know the way it works—we take turns saving each other’s lives,” said Rodney, sounding frantic; but John hadn’t saved his, had he?

“No,” said John, hopeless, and let his head drop under the water, to shut out his voice.

It was hard to surface; his arms grew heavier with every stroke, and he felt grateful. Somewhere in the background Rodney was still going, his voice compressed and seething, the way he got when he was really, truly infuriated, but John focused on the slick tug of the current dragging him to the horizon, and the gravity bearing him down. The rain beat into his face steadily and the moon hadn’t risen, but he didn’t need to see. There wasn’t anything to see anyway, and he felt dizzy, so he closed his eyes and kept swimming, just let the long rhythm of the crawl and the current pull him, pull him, pull him, let it take him all the way out into the ink-wet dark.

•

A bright light was shining right into his eyes. _It’s true_ , he thought, _what they say_. There’s a light. He was supposed to go toward it but he couldn’t move, because he didn’t have a body anymore.

“Beach patrol,” said the light.

“I’m sorry,” John told it. That wasn’t right.

“Beach patrol,” the light repeated. “You can’t sleep here, sir.”

His face felt wrong, because he couldn’t feel it. The light bobbed a little, swept away, then back.

“Come on,” the light said. “You can’t be here overnight. Tide’s coming in.”

“I know that,” he said, or meant to say, but his mouth wasn’t working. He became aware that he was lying face-down on the sand, his neck twisted at an awkward angle to squint up at the light.

He raised one hand and looked at the back of it; it was shaking. He was, he thought distantly, very cold.

“I’ll go home,” he promised, and the light nodded. It was a headlamp. His mouth tasted raw and sour, like vomit. Some part of him hurt, but he didn’t know which part.

“Had a bit too much to drink, looks like. Better go home and sleep it off. What’s her name?”

“Meredith,” he said without thinking, and then dropped his forehead back down onto the sand, grit and tiny shells digging into the skin, and laughed until he gagged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for alcohol use and suicidality/parasuicidal behavior, translation: Sheppard being his usual self only more so.


	25. Dirt Nap

Sam yanked open the door, already in mid-sentence, so angry he could hardly see straight. “Just where the hell have you—” was as far as he got before he felt his eyes widen, taking it in: Sheppard sagging against the doorframe, shaking all over and soaking wet. His sodden BDUs and t-shirt dripped on the tile of the entranceway, stinking of seawater and worse.

Another shiver rippled through him in the time it took Sam to process all this, and John started to slide to the floor. “Oh no you don’t,” he said, still angry, but now for a completely different reason. “Get your ass in here, what the actual fuck did you—”

He hauled John toward the bathroom, kicking the front door shut behind him and pausing only to pull Sheppard’s black t-shirt off over his head and throw it aside, waterlogged and somehow freezing cold. “Boots, off,” he directed. He turned on the tub’s hot water tap full blast, struggling to get the stopper down while also shoving John to a sitting position on the toilet lid, where he promptly slid to the floor, now shuddering uncontrollably.

“That’s okay,” Sam said, more to himself than Sheppard, “just means you’re warming up. Although how you got hypothermic in September in south Texas, I don’t even—” He stuck his hand under the stream of water, judged it hot enough, and turned to help John out of the boots and pants—his fingers fumbling the laces, the zipper. Christ, even his boxers were wet and clammy. “All of it,” Sam ordered again, grabbing a towel from a hook on the back of the door before maneuvering John down into the water, trying to keep his fucked-up knee unbent.

“Too hot,” Sheppard said, jaw clenched. Sam ignored him, dropped the bath towel into the water before he hauled it out dripping and steaming, and wrapped it around John’s shoulders.

“Your opinion on this matters not even a little, so you can just—Shep, look at me.” The hazel eyes refocused as Sam held up a finger, and he spared a second to be mad at himself before his training kicked in. Sheppard wasn’t quite tracking and Sam cursed, crawling over to the sink and dragging out his medikit. The tremors shaking through Sheppard were regular, though, and strong, and made Sam feel better.

“Open,” he ordered, not bothering with the plastic sheath before sticking the thermometer under John’s tongue, privately thinking he’d like to stick it elsewhere. Dumb son of a bitch, what the hell had he—Sam dunked the bath towel again, this time wrapping it higher around Sheppard’s shoulders and neck, before checking his pupil dilation. “Colonel, I need to know what you took, and how much of it.”

“Didn’t,” said John, spitting out the thermometer as soon as it beeped. “Booze.” Sam looked at the readout: 95.2ºF. He’d seen worse, but not in his own goddamn bathtub. If he couldn’t get him up to 97º in half-an-hour, they’d go in. But he thought he’d try to spare John an ER admission, with its panic-attack inducing lights and screams and crying febrile infants. He wasn’t sure he could spare him an admission at all, though, depending on what he’d done. Not to mention a 72-hour hold.

“Scoot,” he said, but he kept his voice quiet; and he stripped down to skin before climbing in behind Sheppard and pulling him close, back to chest, and wrapping his arms around him. Water slopped out of the tub and sloshed onto the floor. Another shudder; Sam held on tightly, wedging his chin against Sheppard’s shoulder to steady him.

“Okay, beautiful,” he said, and John made a wordless negating sound. “You’re a dumb fucking zoomie but I got you, and we’ll figure out the rest later. I got you,” and he held John’s icy hands between both of his, noticing angry red scrapes on the backs, maybe from rock or pavement, a really spectacular purpling set of split knuckles on his right hand, and a long ragged shallow laceration down one arm, both elbows skinned. He felt a flare of anger, and tried to hang onto it, to stay mad, but then Sheppard turned his head to one side, and pressed his face trustingly against Sam’s neck and it was all over; he, Samuel Marshall Wilson, TSgt USAF, codename Falcon, had gone and fallen in love somehow with this messed-up piece of trash, but there was nothing to be done about it now, other than to bend down and press his mouth to the cold hard arch of John’s cheekbone, thinking _fuck, fuck, this was not the plan_ , and then bringing one of his hands up to cup the side of John’s face where there was a bruise along his jawline, trying to warm it. John made another of those sounds and suddenly every muscle in his body relaxed, and he lay back against Sam, and let him hold him up, still shivering, but not as hard.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he whispered into John’s wet hair, that smelled like dead fish and maybe puke and frankly terrible, “I’m still gonna kick your ass, soon as I’m done saving it from hypothermia,” and Sheppard made a sound like a laugh, and then tried to wind his fingers through Sam’s and press impossibly closer. _Kick your ass and then call your goddamn psychiatrist_ , thought Sam, kissing the shell of Sheppard’s ear, _because this parasuicidal bullshit cannot continue, because I actually love you._ He wondered if Sheppard’s pdoc was any good. If it was Lee or Coverdale, probably not. If it was Kaur or Nguyen, he stood a chance.

He wondered if they’d tried him on anything besides Prazosin. He wondered what had triggered this, whether Sheppard had managed to spit out in therapy what happened to him. He wondered if he could call in a favor, get him an appointment at Menninger. His phone vibrated from across the bathroom, half out of his jeans pocket and sliding a little on the tile floor.

“Phone,” said John succinctly, and Sam could see the stars and stripes icon from where he was.

“I had that figured out,” he said, more automatic than tart, trying to figure out how to answer Steve’s call without having to let go of Sheppard, because it felt so good to hold him, even smelling like seaweed and alcohol and having pulled some kind of damn fool stunt all night like passing out under a pier.

“Did you pass out under a pier?” he asked, flicking up the stopper with his heel and letting more water out, until the tops of Sheppard's bony knees were showing, and he closed it again and shifted John’s weight against him until he could reach forward to turn on the tap to refill the tub with hotter water. John hissed, pulling his feet away from the water, and shook his head.

“Swam out. Beach patrol,” he said, and the phrase conveyed an entire epic, somehow.

“Okay,” said Sam. “Okay. Well, this is where it’s about to get interesting.”

“No,” said Sheppard, but Sam didn’t give a shit. He climbed out, dried off as fast as he humanly could, pulled his jeans back on and texted Steve— _kind of got my hands full here, what’s up—_ before shoving the phone at John and ordering, “Call your fucking therapist.”

“Don’t know. Her number,” said John. It was Kaur, then.

He could just call the VA switchboard, but instead Sam bit back another curse and left; went out to John’s car and found his Blackberry in the footwell of the passenger side, covered in sand like all of the upholstery, which was also soaked, like he’d maybe slept in his car. When he came back Sheppard had hauled himself out of the bath and was leaning against the wall wrapped in a towel, looking bleary and addled, but no longer at death’s door. An involuntary vision of John passing out and bashing his head on the edge of the sink flashed through Sam’s mind.

He made him sit on the closed toilet seat, and wasn’t particularly gentle when he pushed him down. John managed to stay upright, blinking a little at Sam as he rummaged around in his medikit’s contents, looking for gauze squares and tape and Neosporin and an oral antibiotic, because god only knew what Sheppard had swallowed out there in that nasty-ass Gulf water.

“You’re—mad at me.”

“You think? That’s an affirmative. Except I’m not mad at you, I’m so pissed off I can’t even see straight. Because what you did,” Sam said, “is not okay.” He felt pressure behind his eyes, a haze of white anger overlaying his field of vision, distorting everything in front of him. “That shit is not cool. My rules for dating include, date does not try to drown himself.”

“It wasn’t like that—I didn’t,” John started.

“Yeah, you know what you _don’t_ get to do right now?” Sam interrupted. He lined up four paper gauze square packages in a neat stack and ripped them open in one movement. “Lie to me. You do not get to lie.”

“Okay,” said John. “That’s—okay.”

“What did you do?”

There was a long pause. Sam waited him out. “Swam out into a rip.”

“How’d you get back to shore?”

“I don’t...I don’t remember. I was pretty drunk.”

“How long have you been suicidal?”

There was an uncomfortable pause, during which Sam located a Z-pack and consciously tried to relax the muscles in his neck that were bunching up. John looked everywhere in the room but at him. “What do you mean, how long—I’m not—”

“Again with the lying.”

“Fuck,” said John, more or less miserably. “I don’t know. A long time. Prep school? Flight school? Weapons? Kabul? The whole time I’ve served? It wasn’t as bad, in Atlantis.” Sam crouched there for a minute, unmoving. When John spoke next, his voice was raw and unguarded. “Mostly since Rodney, maybe.”

“Christ almighty, Shep. How are you functioning?” Sam ran a hand over his head, taking deep breaths so he wouldn’t throw something.

“It’s not—I’m not, you know. Giving away possessions, or have a plan or anything, Not writing letters to make people feel shitty afterw—”

“Of course not,” Sam said, “because then you’d have to admit there’s a problem. But let me guess: if there’s a mission guaranteed to end in a fireball, you volunteer. Hell, you probably just strap the nuke directly to your body and hurl yourself into the breech like a goddamn Avenger. Which you aren’t.”

John looked incredibly guilty and Sam figured he’d just described exactly, without intending to, one of John’s more recent actions. “That’s the job, Sam.”

“No, it isn’t, and don’t try that shit on with me—deliberately dying in the line of fire is _not_ the fucking job.”

“Sometimes it is.”

Sam sat back, astounded, paper tape in one hand and a spray bottle of lidocaine in the other. “Are you the worst strategist in your entire galaxy full of Marines, or are these Wraith bloodsuckers somehow way stupider than you are, because I honestly have no idea how you’ve kept an expedition full of civilians alive this long.”

“We always had Rodney,” said Sheppard, voice low, and Sam saw his eyes lose focus and get glassy with unshed tears but he was still enraged, and not feeling particularly merciful.

“So somehow, this guy, this _one guy_ could keep you from flying into a deathtrap and self-immolating, but without him, you can’t stay alive? Because that’s fucked up, Sheppard.”

“So Kaur tells me.”

“Does she also tell you that you belong on a locked unit? Because that’s where we put people who try to die, Shep. We put them somewhere safe until they’re no longer a harm to others or _to themselves_.” He ripped off a few lengths of paper tape and stuck them to the side of the sink.

“I wasn’t trying to—I didn’t really think this through,” John said.

Sam laughed, and it wasn’t friendly. “Clearly.”

“But I don’t need to be in a mental hospital.”

“Wow, I wasn’t aware you had an MD in psychiatry,” Sam said, and zipped his medikit shut more forcefully than he needed to. “Funny story: I happen to have an MSW in psychotherapy from Howard University, am licensed to practice in the District of Columbia, and I can tell you, I could get you 5150’d right here and now.”

“But you won’t,” said John, looking nervous.

“Haven’t made up my mind,” said Sam tersely. “Hands out.”

John put out his hands obediently and Sam sprayed the backs of them with lidocaine, and then opened the chlorhexidine. Blood had scabbed over the dirt and grit, and Sam forced himself to slow down, to tease the grains of sand out carefully. John didn’t flinch or make a sound.

“See, that right there.” He threw a filthy gauze pad into the trash and soaked another with chlorhex. “Most people would be cussing right about now.”

John shrugged, the overly casual one-shoulder one that let Sam know he was fronting. “You’re doing a good job.”

“Take these,” Sam said, handing him the first two zithromax. “I’ll get you water in a second.”

“I don’t need it,” John said, and swallowed them dry.

“Actually, you do,” said Sam. He smeared antibiotic cream over the now-clean wounds, taped down the gauze, and motioned for Sheppard’s arm. “And you can’t take them without something in your stomach, so I hope you like yogurt.”

John made a face at this and Sam mentally added _pt displays anorectic sxs_ to his mental charting. There was a long magenta-and-blue bruise down Sheppard’s left hip and thigh, and bruising on both knees, but nothing that looked like it needed to be taped up. He finished with Sheppard’s elbows and stood up to wash his hands.

“Don’t move,” he said, and went to the kitchen, where he found a box of cherry Jell-O and boiled a mug of water in the microwave, then stirred in a few teaspoons of the powder and a generous pinch of salt. He snagged a plain yogurt from the fridge and returned to the bathroom just in time to see Sheppard slide ungracefully from toilet to floor.

“Right,” he said, and put down the cup and yogurt to go to the bedroom for a blanket. When he came back John was slumped up against one wall looking dubiously at the mug of steaming red liquid.

“Drink it, you need the electrolytes,” Sam said, and wrapped the blanket around him. John leaned into his touch and Sam had to fight not to stroke his hair, which was going in more directions than seemed possible. There was a swirl of silver at the crown and Sam spared a moment to be glad Sheppard had lived long enough to go gray.

John made a face. “What—“

“Hot Jell-O. Brings up your blood sugar, raises your core temp.”

“It’s gross,” said John, and took another cautious sip. “Tastes like ORS.”

“Yeah, well next time don’t show up looking like a drowned cat and maybe I’ll make you eggs benedict and mimosas. You’re lucky it’s not in a goddamn IV bag.” Sam wondered if he should run an IV bag. He settled for shoveling a spoonful of yogurt into Sheppard’s mouth when he opened it to protest.

“I’m not drunk,” he said, after he’d swallowed.

“Congratulations.”

“And I’m not an alcoholic.”

“Said no alcoholic, ever. Who’s also Irish. And a fighter pilot.”

“I’m not.”

“I don’t care,” said Sam, and handed him the yogurt with the spoon stuck in it. “I care that _you could have died_ and I wouldn’t even get your dog tags and a flag. Eat this, I got a call to make.”

He took John’s phone and paced in the bedroom while the call went through. Kaur picked up on the second ring.

“Colonel Sheppard?”

“No, it’s Sam Wilson. And before you tell me anything you shouldn’t, you better know—I’m also his boyfriend.” _As well as your colleague._

There was a pause. “Sergeant Wilson. Thank you for telling me. This does change things.”

“Yeah, I know.” As it was, he could tell her everything, but she couldn’t tell him shit. That worked for him.

“Is John okay?”

“He’s fine,” Sam said, and as soon as the words left his mouth, he had to sit down cross-legged on the carpet, legs suddenly wobbly and unable to hold him up. “Parasuicidal. Got drunk and tried to drown. Borderline hypothermic, but I got his temp back up, and he didn’t aspirate anything. He’s tracking, not impaired, just pretty banged up. He’s fine.”

“That’s good to hear,” Kaur said, in the measured way she had, one which let Sam know she was completely horrified and also taking notes on every word he said. “So we don’t need an ER admit.”

“Do you want me to bring him in?”

“That depends,” said Kaur. “How would you describe his state of mind?”

Sam swallowed, then gave the rundown, brain on autopilot. “Patient presents as a moderate-to-severely depressed 47-year-old white male,” he began. “No history of mania or psychosis, high probability of a longstanding adjustment disorder around issues of sexual preference, as well as untreated PTSD, recent severe injuries received in the line of duty, and an unresolved bereavement. Denies suicidal intentions at this time, has no means and no plan.” He paused, and took a breath, then said, more honestly, “He’s pretty embarrassed.”

“That was very clinical, Sam, but…how are _you_ feeling?”

Sam opened his mouth to say something along the lines of _I want to strangle him myself_ , but instead what came out was, “Scared.”

“Anyone would be,” she agreed calmly. “It’s frightening for a caregiver not to be able to help. And very frightening when someone we care about is in danger.”

“He’s—I really don’t think he’s suicidal, is the thing,” Sam went on. He listened for a second, head tilted toward the bathroom. He didn’t much care if John overheard any of this. “Passively, yes. But not actively, not intentionally. I’ve known him a few months. I don’t think he’s personality-disordered. As far as I know, last night’s the first shit like this he’s ever pulled.”

Kaur was silent and Sam knew she was running the numbers in her head. Military: not good. History of risk-seeking behavior: not good. Divorced: not good. Substance use: not good. Bisexual: really not good. White male over forty: the most amount of not good it was possible to be. Access to firearms—

“Does he have his service weapon?” she asked, with deceptive mildness. Sam shook his head, which she couldn’t see.

“No, and I don’t have mine either; they’re at Ellington.” He winced at the plural; PJs might carry a weapon but they certainly didn’t have multiple ones. All Kaur really knew about him was from weekly team check-ins and paperwork; Sam wasn’t sure if she’d put it together, but she seemed plenty smart enough. Whatever. He had bigger problems than her figuring out he was Captain America’s 2IC.

“Ultimately,” she said, “It comes down to _your_ feeling of safety, Sergeant. Do you feel comfortable keeping him with you, maybe bringing him to his next appointment? Or would you rather bring him in now—we can find him a bed at DeBakey until one opens up at Methodist, because I’d rather see him there.”

Sam thought about it, let himself really imagine both scenarios. Something in his chest felt pinched and hard, like he’d swallowed a shard of ice, at the thought of dropping off Sheppard at the VA and leaving him there on a 72-hour hold, with a bunch of strung-out vets in scrubs and those hospital socks with rubber treads on the sole. Half of them would be coming off meth or a manic episode and hollering at the walls, and the other half would be catatonic on Haldol or Thorazine. They’d make him eat scrambled eggs made out of powder with a plastic spoon. They’d make him color in paper placemats and call it art therapy. They’d ask him questions he couldn’t answer, about Atlantis and about McKay and probably about Sam, too.

Maybe that was where John needed to be, but Sam couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t.

“I’ll keep him with me,” is what he said, and Kaur accepted this with a quiet murmur of agreement.

“Come in tomorrow morning when the office opens—try to be there maybe fifteen minutes early,” she suggested, “and I’ll work him into the schedule. I have to get a consult with the clinic director, so this isn’t entirely my call, but I assume you know that. He may have to go inpatient. But not for tonight.”

“Okay,” said Sam, weak with relief. “I can do that. Thank you.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. For your honesty, and for being such a good friend to John right now.”

“It’s not a chore,” he said. “He’s—” _easy to love._ “I care about him.”

“I’m glad he has someone like you in his life,” Kaur said, and he could hear the smile in her voice. “We’ll see you both in the morning.”

Sam hung up and realized John was standing behind him, blanket still around his shoulders, weaving a little. “I drank your gross hot sugar juice.”

“Yogurt?”

“Gone.”

“Then bed,” Sam said, and stood up to pull back the top sheet, wondering if he should give John some Benadryl or if he’d be able to sleep on his own—but one look at Sheppard’s face, drawn and pale, told him all he needed to know.

He wanted to get into bed with John and hold him, but he was still shaky with anger, and he was afraid of what he might say. In the back of his brain he could hear his father’s voice, which wasn’t a good sign. _Snap, Snap. Go to your room and stay there, and pray. Let the Holy Ghost work on that hard heart of yours, son._

Sam took a deep breath and pulled back the covers; crawled into bed behind Sheppard and pulled him into his arms unhesitatingly. “What the hell happened,” he said, crossing his forearms over John’s chest. “Why did you go down there, and why didn’t you call me?” He wasn’t clear if by _down there_ he meant the Gulf Coast, or down _in it,_ the corrosive suck of utter defeat.

“Because you shouldn’t have to save me,” Sheppard said, still shivering. His skin was cool to Sam’s touch and he turned around, pressed the tip of his nose, icy, into Sam’s chest.

“That’s not how it is.”

“Look, I don’t.” John stopped, his face twitching like he was trying to get something out, so Sam let him work on it. “It’s not your—I don’t want you to _save me_. _”_

Sam had no idea what his own face was doing; he couldn’t quite believe they were having this conversation. “Good, ‘cause I’m not gonna. What set all this off, anyway? You were fine when you left for PT yesterday morning.”

John made a scraped sound like a laugh. “I’m done with PT. They showed me the door.”

“Really? I mean, that’s—”   _good, though, right_ , he started to say; and then he got it. He opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it, closed it again. Tucked John’s wet head under his chin and took several slow, measured breaths, arms tight around him.

He thought about some of the bullshit he’d done during Indoctrination. How pointlessly sadistic it had seemed at the time, and how, looking back, those ten days had saved not only his life but scores, even hundreds of others. Shoving a wet sandbag across the ground flat on his stomach, sand burrs digging into his skin, covered in mud, mouth full of grit. Humping a railroad tie in the dark with half-a-dozen teammates, doing crunches while holding it up, trying not to puke. Swimming lap after lap after lap in the Pool with bath towels tied to each wrist, sodden and dragging, slowing him until he was barely moving as he tried not to drink chlorine or, worst of all, go down, get airhorned out of the water. Always, always being the only black guy in a group of what started out as 120 candidates and ended with ten. And that was just Indoc—the PJ pipeline was worse than brutal: it was exactly like combat, and if Sam had known then he was going to wind up going shoulder-to-shoulder with the New York crew, he wouldn’t have chosen any other training.

“So there’s this day during Indoc—extended training day,” Sam told him quietly, as though ETD weren’t also a synonym for Every Part of Your Body Is on Fire and Also You’re Throwing Up While You Swim. “It’s like any other hell night: they don’t tell you when it is, starts at 2 am with bullhorns and throwing a hundred-pound pack at you, that kind of thing.”

John made a small movement, so Sam knew he was listening. He continued, “And it lasts twenty-five, thirty hours, maybe longer, while they throw everything they can think of at you, mostly in the dark or in the water. Not just swimming: paddle kicks off the edge of the Pool, then swimming, back and forth until you lose track. Guys giving up every few minutes. Have to say ‘I quit’ three times, then hobble off looking like they’ll never be able to look at themselves in the mirror again. Guys going under and getting called out of the water. Guys trying to give up, and the rest of us dragging their fucking asses because we won’t let them. And that’s just the first time—if First Shirt doesn’t think you were good enough, the entire class repeats it, as many times as you need to until you all pass.”

“How to not die,” John said, voice muffled, and Sam was so grateful to be with someone who got it that he kissed the top of John’s head.

“And how to not die for a long time, even after you start wanting to. You did SERE, must’ve been just as bad—some water training in there, other stuff too, probably way worse than Indoc.”

John turned his face, tucked it into the curve of Sam’s arm. Sam put one hand on the back of his neck and left it there, warm and close. “Bad enough. But it worked.”

“Because you didn’t die.”

“Because they, I mostly—”

Sam’s hand curled a little more firmly around his neck. “Come on, Shep. Finish that.”

A long pause. Then, whispered: “Kept them alive. Sometimes. Got us out.”

Sam rewarded that with a slow stroke down the length of his spine, then back up again. His muscles were tight and Sam wondered if his PT had included any deep-tissue work. “You don’t even know how many times, you’re so focused on the ones that went wrong. But I’m gonna tell you—most of the time you saved not only your own dumb ass but a lot of other people’s, too.”

“You can’t know that,” said John, motionless.

“Didn’t we have this conversation at Numbers, the night we met? You think I’m new here? I’m pararescue, Sheppard. I know about the ones you lose. I know that lifetime body count.”

John made a strange noise, and then, arms tight around Sam’s waist: “Six.”

“Okay,” said Sam, a little surprised at the precision of that number; and then a lot surprised, because he could feel hot tears against his skin, and it made something inside him hurt. “Hey, whoa, come here.”

“No,” said John, but let himself be held, and Sam could pretend he wasn’t rocking them both back and forth a little, as the side of his neck got damp and hot and Sam didn’t know what to do for this, there wasn’t a course in the MSW program for starting to fall in love with someone who was completely fucked up and had maybe just sort of tried to kill himself, and was probably also going to drop for days about the fact that he was crying outside of kinky sex and Sam had to think of something, fast. He said the first thing that came into his head.

“Tell me everything you know about water.”

Sheppard coughed. Slowly, his shoulders stopped shaking. Sam held him tightly and waited.

“The city, it’s in the middle of an ocean. Kind of like being on an aircraft carrier. Only a really big one. There are piers, and part of it’s underwater. I mean, it’s—it’s a city.”

_Piers._ No wonder he’d gone to the coast. “Did you swim?”

John shook his head, then laughed, a small wet sound. “Not on purpose, not from there. On the mainland, whenever we had days off.”

Sam ran a hand back and forth across his shoulders, unthinkingly soothing. “Okay, what else?”

Another long pause. “Um, surfing. Always spent my leave on Oahu or Maui. Went to Bali a couple times. Oaxaca, once. Not big waves, but the long ones, those are best.”

Sheppard was too lanky to be a natural distance swimmer, but Sam had seen him sprint, which he figured is what you wanted in choppy water with a board leashed to your ankle. He’d always privately thought surfers were crazy white people with more money than sense, but wasn’t one to talk: he flew an exosuit. Maybe surfing was the closest a grounded adrenaline junkie could get to flying.

“How’d you learn?”

“My brother Dave—his best friend’s dad. They had a place out at Malibu, we’d go. Dave hated it but I took to it right away. I was maybe fourteen, fifteen? Broke my arm that summer, got in trouble.”

“Daredevil,” said Sam, lips against John’s temple, trying not to imagine him as a skinny teenager with salt water drying in his hair and making it stand straight up, sunburned and reckless. Oh, he was in trouble with this guy. “Show me where.”

“It healed okay. You can’t tell anything happened,” but John held out his right arm and pointed to what must have been a spiral ulnar fracture, probably from flipping off the board at just the right angle. Sam palpated it carefully but John was right, he couldn’t feel anything. He kept John’s forearm in both hands, stroking the dark hair, feeling the muscles jump a little underneath his skin. The pale strip of skin on his wrist stood out, with its webbing of fine scars that were obviously test cuts, but it wasn’t the right time to ask. It seemed like it never would be.

“That’s good. Tell me one more thing.”

“About water?” John was silent for a long time, and when he spoke his words were slurred, a little. “I know most drivers don’t, but I like rain.”

“Yeah?”

“I got used to it, in the city. It rained a lot. Sure, too much of it and you go crazy. But it’s also...it’s safe. When you’re inside.”

Sam shut his eyes, tried to imagine. Thought about the Registan; about Yuma, Nellis, a dozen other bases where he’d trained or been stationed. Sand and wind and endless relentless sun and being up flying in that, turning against the glare and the white heat of it, grit in your eyes, in your teeth, the sun making SA impossible. He thought he maybe understood.

There were things John couldn’t let himself have, unless he didn’t have a choice. Most things, maybe. Touch. The relief of tears. Losing control. Rain days were probably in there, somewhere, when it came to enforced peace and quiet. Otherwise he’d think he should be out there barrelling around and doing whatever it was he did on missions. Negotiating with unfriendly locals. Getting captured and tortured by them, apparently. Keeping his team alive, including the guy he’d been secretly in love with, for years; keeping an entire city alive, in a galaxy that wanted to devour them, when death was insatiable anyway and always, always won in the end.

“Think about rain, then,” he said. “And get some sleep.” Sheppard didn’t make a sound; he was already out. “It’ll be okay,” said Sam, mostly to himself; and then: “We’ll figure out the rest later,” and he loosened his hold on Sheppard; as he would have to do, once he woke up.


	26. Downrange

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings at the end.

Sam couldn’t sleep; after a few minutes he got up silently, closed the door behind him. Sheppard slept six, then eight, then ten hours. Sam called Kaur, told her it would be another day. Around hour thirteen he went to Ellington and took it out on cones, until he made one guy cry and another throw up in the bucket they kept next to the pool for that exact purpose.

He wasn’t a smoker, or he’d have made it through all of Sheppard’s sodden Marlboros by the time John woke up, just out of sheer rage. He needed a punching bag; he needed Steve.

_Hands full with what?_

_Suicidal boyfriend. You?_

_Same, pretty much. At least for once it’s not Norse gods._

_You need backup?_

_No, me and Nat got it covered. Come visit sometime, though. Bring your flyboy, Tony wants to meet him. Something about the CIA?_

Sam dropped his head onto the kitchen counter after that one. He figured John was awake in there and just stalling, not wanting to come out of the bedroom because he suspected Sam was going to rip a strip off him. Which, correct.

He got up, rubbed both hands over his face, took a deep breath, and knocked before entering.

John was sitting on the floor, blanket around his shoulders, the fingers of his left hand encircling his bare right wrist. He looked up at Sam without speaking.

“You’re seeing Dr. Kaur tomorrow morning,” Sam told him. Sheppard checked his watch, which glowed faintly in the dimness. He seemed to be just now realizing he’d slept through most of the day. It was cloudy outside, but the rain had stopped.

Sam used the bathroom, and when he came out John was in the kitchen, wearing one of Sam’s old Howard t-shirts and a pair of sweatpants, drinking a glass of tap water. Sam squared his shoulders.

“Sheppard, we need to talk, and it’s exactly what that sounds like.”

“Okay,” said John slowly. He put down the glass and his arms went behind his back into parade rest, which made something hurt behind Sam’s eyes. He spoke without thinking.

“You know we actually don't have to be perfect to deserve to be alive. We don’t.”

“What?” John said.

“Did that short you out? I said, we don’t have to be perfect in order to live. That includes you, by the way. You’re in that category as well. No matter what happened. Sometimes shit goes sideways, or you’re not who Dad wanted you to be, maybe not even who you wanted to be, but you still get to live. You still get to walk on the surface of the earth, breathe air, take up space.”

“Jesus, Sam, I know that,” Sheppard said, and crossed his arms over his chest. The shirt was one of Sam’s favorites, a soft dark blue heather with white lettering. John had it on inside-out, and his hair was rumpled.

“So here’s the thing,” Sam said, and he could feel the muscles in his shoulders tightening. “We can talk about this until our faces fall off, but you don’t get to kill yourself. Or throw yourself on a grenade, or fly into the sun to save everybody, or however you’re trying to hide it from yourself.”

“I told you, sometimes that’s the job,” Sheppard said, eyes pale.

“Wrong,” said Sam. “That’s not anyone’s job. I don’t care if you’re the CO of an alien city that flies, you don’t get to pull that shit. Even Steve Rogers isn’t allowed to martyr himself. The graveyard is full of irreplaceable people.”

“That doesn’t make any—I’m not irreplaceable, that’s the point.” John’s voice was hoarse, probably from swallowing salt water and throwing it back up. Sam’s chest ached.

“What the hell do you know about it? You matter, Sheppard. You matter to _me_. I’m a contract dom and guess what’s on our contract? Sub does not get drunk and swim out into a rip current to drown. We didn’t negotiate that and it’s a hard limit for me. Not safe, not sane, and definitely not fucking consensual.” He needed to leave, now, before he said anything worse. His face already felt hot, and he wanted contradictory things: to go to John and hold him, and also to punch him in the mouth.

He came out from around behind the kitchen counter, found the keys to his bike, pocketed them. “This isn’t going to work anymore,” he said, and couldn’t look at John. “You need more help. And BDSM can’t help with a death wish.”

“I don’t have a—” Sam just ignored him and kept going.

“Kink can actually destabilize you worse, if you’re personality-disordered, which most suicidal people are. We shouldn’t—we have to stop.” It hurt to say the words, a stabbing feeling between his ribs. John looked incredulous, so he said it again, to himself as much as to John. “I’m serious, Sheppard. I like you but not enough to watch you eat dirt and do nothing. Not on my watch. We’re through here.”

He shook his head to clear it and stepped backward while he tried to find an edge to grasp, something to give him leverage over this before he really lost it. Where was his breath, he couldn’t find it, couldn’t quite feel his hands or feet or even his face anymore. He needed a voice to call his name, someone to pull him back from the edge. But John wasn’t in any shape to come after him. Their relationship wasn’t balanced, and that was the sign he’d been looking for. D/s only worked when both of you were pulling your weight. Hell, _life_ only worked that way.

“But I’m seeing a therapist, I’m—”

“That’s great. I’m glad. You’re also done with PT so you’re about to ship back out, and unless Kaur’s going with you I’m guessing you’re just going to schedule yourself right back into the field, bent leg and all. I’m not doing this shit again.”

John’s head swiveled up, face ashen. “Wait—what do you mean, again?”

“Did you miss the part where I already watched my boyfriend get blown out of the sky by a fucking RPG? You know what, no—Riley was a lot of things but he didn’t want to die. He loved me. We were solid. And it still nearly took me down. Fuck this, I’m getting out of here—”

“Sam, wait,” and Sheppard made the mistake of putting one hand on his arm. Sam didn’t shake it off, just stood perfectly still, not reacting, until John registered the coldness and slowly removed his hand, took a half-step backward, then another one.

But it was already too late; Sam felt the first blunt shove of it like a shockwave, heat pushing inside his chest, a bright white behind his eyes. _Snap, Snap. You always let that temper get the better of you, son._ He didn’t care what he said next, didn’t care who got hurt.

“You throwing yourself in front of the gun—how good of a strategy is that anyway? Is that what got your guy killed? Is that why Rodney’s dead? How’s you being suicidal working out for him?”

“Don’t,” John said, face gone deadly still; but Sam was on top of it now, he was riding it all the way down.

“Don’t what, don’t bring him into this? He’s been in this since the night I met you. He’s practically in bed with us—he _talks to you,_ Sheppard. You need way more help than I can give you.” His hands were shaking and he curled them into fists, fought the urge to throw a punch at something: the wall, the mirror in the hallway; a suicidal pilot, a dead astrophysicist. The intensity of what he wanted was frightening. Rope didn’t feel like enough: he wanted to tie Sheppard down with leather and chains, fix him in place with needles and safety pins, keep him safe and make him stay put. Sam wanted the opposite of all his training: to mark him, wound him, make cuts, see the red blood welling up, to know above all that John was _alive—_

“I don’t want your help, Sam! I don’t need it, that’s not—”

“Great, because I’m done helping.”

“This wasn’t—it isn’t like that with us.”

“You’re right, it’s not, because I’m done. At least McKay doesn’t have to watch you do this shit over and over.” There wasn’t enough oxygen, he had to get out of here.

“Sam, it’s not about you,” said John, looking like he might be about to throw up.

“Like hell it isn’t,” Sam said, and slammed the door behind him on his way out, so hard the frame shook.

•

He drove until he wasn’t angry anymore, until the shot of adrenaline had dulled and left only the flat bitter taste of metal in his mouth, and a headache pounding low at the base of his skull. He found himself outside Sarah’s house in the Third just as the sun went down. He parked his bike, driving his heel against the kickstand with more force than was strictly necessary, and then hesitated, thinking he should text her in case she had company or didn’t want any.

He was still standing there, thumbs poised over his phone, trying to figure out what to say, when the porch light came on and she opened the screen door.

“Mm-hm,” was all she said, but it held everything. 

“Yeah,” Sam said in reply, and she shook her head and let him inside.

He refused a beer, but Sarah uncapped two anyway and brought them both out to the back porch, Rolling Rock extra-pale in long-neck green bottles. She took a pull off hers and watched him without saying anything as he paced back and forth.

“Can’t say I didn’t warn you,” she said, and Sam sat down and put his face in both hands. “Whoa, whoa—okay, hang on,” and he could feel her hand cautiously circling around his waist. He turned toward her and she gave him a quick, hard hug. He laughed, let go, slumped back against the cushions of her wicker loveseat and pressed a pillow to his face, groaning into it.

“You did warn me. You _been_ knew. But you’ve met him."

“Sure, he’s pretty; but whatever he did to get you all spooled up like this? Not worth it.”

Sam put the pillow in his lap, traced patterns of leaves with one finger. “It’s not the pretty,” he said, finally, and reached for his beer. “It’s the whole deal. But there’s also a fair amount of crazy.”

“What kind of crazy we talking about? Like, chases you with a knife, sees things that aren’t there, thinks the government is spying on him—”

Sam laughed again, miserably. “The government probably _is_ spying on him. No, mostly it’s the parasuicidal, mood-disordered kind of crazy.”

Sarah’s eyebrows shot up. “Um, please tell me you are not diagnosing him.”

“I’m not! I just—he showed up at my place two days ago smelling like dead fish and whiskey, says he swam out into the Gulf and doesn’t remember how he got back to shore.”

“Okay,” said Sarah, “so…so parasuicidal is actually the correct term here. But look, all you have to do is make sure you’re staying inside your boundaries. You don’t have to dump him. Did you dump him?”

“Yeah,” said Sam, and drank his beer. He wondered what Steve would say.

“Because he’s too unstable.”

“Yeah.”

“And because you're so well-adjusted,” Sarah said, matter-of-factly.

“I’m not suicidal.”

Sarah stared at him. “Wow,” she said finally. “Just…wow. You actually believe your own shit.”

“I’m not!”

She shook her head, braids swinging. “It’s like you think I’ve never seen those videos, you hotdogging around like you’re shot up with super-serum or some nonsense.”

“That’s different. Steve needed backup, I had to—” he broke off abruptly.

Her eyebrows arched. “Keep going.” Sam opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Uh-huh. I thought so. I don’t need the details—the question is, what’s hard about it for you? What are you hanging onto, because this clearly isn’t just about him. I don’t want to say Dad, but.”

“Jesus, Sarah.”

“Look, I don’t make the news, I just report it. And I know a savior complex when I see one. Stop trying to be this guy’s one-man ambulance and just be his boyfriend.”

Sam put the empty beer bottle down on the floor. “I’m scared.”

“You think?”

“I like him a lot.”

“You _think?”_

“Stop saying that. Okay, I more than like him.”

“Oh my god,” Sarah said, “Why are men so _romantic._ Is he in love with you, too?”

“I don’t know,” Sam admitted.

“Well, that’s a whole other thing,” she said, and Sam nodded. “But you have to decide, are you getting over him or getting closer to him? Because that’s—that’s the therapeutic crisis here.”

“My life is lousy with therapists,” Sam told her.

“Pot, kettle,” said Sarah, and stood up and stretched. “I’m relationship-agnostic, okay. I don’t know if this is your one-and-only or not. Maybe you need a solid exit strategy; maybe you’re about to pick out rings. What I do know is what a healthy choice looks like, and panic isn’t it.” She kicked at his foot.

“What,” said Sam, frowning.

“All I have in the house is frozen food. Have you had dinner? Let’s get the kids and go to the icehouse taco truck. You’re driving, I’m a lightweight.”

Sam wound up picking all the cilantro and avocado out of Peri’s taco and eating it himself, because, she informed him, “green things is gross,” and trying to text Nat with the other hand, since Steve and Bucky were apparently also having a therapeutic crisis—only Nat didn’t call it that, she called it “Bucky being an utter and irredeemable little shit” who had not only freaked out in a Park Slope bodega and not known where he was, but then punched Clint in the face (and broken his nose, again). But that apparently wasn’t the asshole part; the asshole part was him barricading himself in the coat closet again and refusing to talk to Steve or Nat for two days, only coming out to pee when Nat promised him in Russian they wouldn’t make a grab for him.

It sort of turned into a Greek chorus after that, an echo chamber of different voices all conveying the same message to Sam. He knew enough Jung to recognize synchronicity when he heard it, though. _He’s worth it_ , Steve texted; and Sam envied that staunch constancy, Steve’s tireless, unwavering, century-long faith that James Buchanan Barnes wasn’t just a pain in the ass, but a particular pain in _his_ particular ass, and Steve would never back away from that, or decide he couldn’t handle being close to him. But was Steve an idiot, or just an unprecedentedly good guy? Sam had been trying to figure that one out for months now and he reckoned he would probably still be deciding if Steve was loyal or just stupid for the rest of their lives.

“So yeah, you get to choose,” Sarah said, wiping crema off Joey’s chin as he squirmed away from her. “But you don’t get to flake just because you actually care. If that’s the reason—”

“It’s not a good one,” Sam finished. “Or the right one. I get it, okay?”

“And yet here you are.” She smiled and her whole face lit up. “Dos tacos de pescado más, por favor.”

“Do you want another Topo Chico?” Sam asked, and was standing up from the picnic table to get them when a palmetto bug flew right into Peri’s hair; and then there was nothing but screaming, and laughing, and shreds of cabbage and tortillas everywhere, which was about right, and the perfect ending to a completely shitty couple of days. And that, Sam thought, was the kind of thing at which family was best.

•

He hadn’t expected Sheppard to still be there, when he let himself into his condo. John had apparently gone out and come back, because his car was at the curb now, instead of in the driveway, and he was sitting at one end of the sofa in different clothes: his weird silky black uniform shirt, zipped all the way to the throat, and his dark gray BDUs. He had more color in  his face and looked less like hammered death, and Sam realized with a jolt like nausea that he’d needed to see John, and see him okay, like he needed breathing.

“Kaur let you go,” Sam said, shucking his leather jacket and walking toward him. The urge to touch him was all but overpowering, but he thought he maybe still had jalapeño on his hands. He sat down, wary, at the other end of the sofa.

“Yeah,” Sheppard said, “she did.”

“You tell her everything?”

“I think you did that,” said John, “but yeah, I did.” And then: “I’m not here to try to talk you out of it. I just wanted—I wanted to say I’m sorry. And thank you. For everything.”

Sam looked at him more closely. John’s hair was clean and dry, and behaving itself about as well as usual. The abrasion on his jaw had darkened into a purple bruise, and he’d obviously reapplied the dressings on both arms and done a bad job of it, judging from the lumpy shapes beneath his shirt and around his right hand. Sam didn’t know what John wanted, not really, but he knew what he wanted, now; still it tangled in his throat like something that wouldn’t either come up or go down.

“We’re not back together,” he said, but he put out one hand.

“I know that,” said John, interlacing his fingers between Sam’s. “I know. But I needed to see you anyway. Before I go back.”

“You’re leaving,” said Sam, and couldn’t breathe.

From the look on his face, John couldn’t either. “Would you—could you just—”

“Yes,” Sam said, once he’d pulled his mouth back from Sheppard’s. “Yes, beautiful. Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for a pretty wince-worthy argument ending in Sam slamming out of his own apartment, because seriously, John.


	27. Sweet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for consensual BDSM activities at the end of the chapter. Stay safe!

John had seen some shit in his time. He’d had breakup sex before; he and Nancy had probably had it more than they’d had regular sex. He knew its fragile watery quality, like being shaken inside a broken snowglobe, the way each touch threatened to spill over into either making up, or being pushed away forever. Kinky breakup sex was a new one for him, though. He figured there were whole websites devoted to it, but then he stopped thinking, because Sam was stripping him, and his kisses were like all of Sam’s: complete, intense, full-throttle, real.

“What would you like to do, beautiful? Is there something you want?”

“Show me how you like it,” John said, barely able to breathe.

Sam groaned and bent to help him step out of his boxers, tilting his head to rest it against John’s hip, nowhere near where John wanted it to be. “Yeah, but first. We have to get to that. You have to work for it.”

“Yes,” said John, because yes to whatever, yes to anything Sam wanted, yes to that skin against his, warm and sleek and yielding but with strength beneath it, muscle and bone, plane and angle, weight and pain, and yes, just yes.

“Then here’s how it is,” Sam said, mouth skimming the jut of his hip bone, biting down a little, not carefully. “I want you facedown, and you get to say one word, and one word only, unless you safeword out. Whatever I ask you, your answer is _yes_. You can move however you need to, as long as you stay down. Think you can manage that?”

“Yes, Sam,” he said, and without taking his face away from where it rested, Sam reached up and stripped off the bandage on John’s forearm, taking some of the hair with it and making him gasp in pain. “Okay, yes,” he amended, “I mean, yes.”

“You’re as shitty at taking orders are you are at killing yourself, aren’t you,” said Sam, walking him backward toward the bed and helping him turn to hands and one knee, and then lower himself the rest of the way to the bedspread. Sheppard had made the bed before he left and Sam made an amused sound, then shifted him to one side and ripped back the blanket and top sheet.

“Yes,” said Sheppard. He winced a little as his abraded skin touched the sheet, but it felt cool and soothing.

“Good girl,” said Sam, and however many times that happened, however many more times he had to listen to Sam praising him that way, John knew he would never get used to the raw panicked combination of terror and lust it evoked in him. “Can you be good for me?”

“Yes,” he said, tensing despite himself under Sam’s touch—long strokes from shoulders to waist to upper thighs, and Sam wasn’t avoiding his scars, was warming him up for whatever was going to happen, wasn’t going to hold back. He shut his eyes, willed himself to let go.

“Are you going to let me hurt you, instead of hurting yourself?”

“Yes,” he promised, squeezing his eyes shut. “Yes.”

“Do you want me to hurt you?”  
  
“Yes.”

“Do you like it? Do you like it when I hurt you?”

 _Fuck. You know I do._ “Yes.”

“Are you going to cry for me? Are you going to give it up?”

John exhaled, bit down on a wrinkle in the sheet, still wasn’t ready when Sam’s first blow cracked across the fold between thighs and ass. The sheer amount of pain was shocking, the way it jolted through his entire body; the movement jarred him against the bed, stroked the full length of his cock against the sheets and left him throbbing and hot, hanging there, suspended inside his brain between desire and discomfort.

“Are you going to be my bitch?” Sam asked, breath already coming hard, and struck him again, and again, before John could spit out the sheet and choke, “Yes.”

“Are you going to ask me to fuck you?” Sam said. “Are you going to let me inside?”

“God, yes,” John said, and Sam reached beneath him and pinched one nipple, hard, using fingernails. “ _Yes.”_

“Sweet girl,” said Sam, voice thick with emotion, and then the blows came hard and fast, and John went there right away, inside that soft dark wilderness, somewhere in that strange tangled place he’d only ever gone with Sam, their trust in each other holding him up like a hammock or a net, where he couldn’t fall, only always be falling, but never reach the end of it.

“Are you going to miss me?”

“Yes,” John panted, not sure how he was still able to form the word. He shook his head, wiped his wet face against the sheets, tried not to come, tried not to beg.

“Are you going to quit fighting me? Are you going to come whenever I tell you?”

“Yes, I, fuck— _yes.”_

“I’m letting that one go,” said Sam, taking his hand away from John’s balls. “They’re going to get harder, sweetheart. Are you going to leave me? Are you going back to Atlantis?”

“Yes,” John said, finally, like it was crushed out of him, and the only way he could stand the pain in his chest was to focus on Sam’s hand hitting him, and the need cresting up inside him.

“Are you going to think about me for the rest of your life? Every time you make love, every time you jerk off, every time you—”

“Yes,” John half-shouted, desperate to shut him up. “Yes, yes—”

“Are you going to stay alive?”

“No—I mean, maybe, fuck, I can’t promise th—”

“Wrong answer,” said Sam, and brought his hand down again, so hard John was sure this time it was leaving an imprint in his skin. “Are you. Going to. Stay alive.”

“Yes,” he said, and meant it, goddammit, he fucking _meant it_ , anything, _anything_ , just—

“Give it to me,” Sam whispered in his ear. “Let me have it, I want it, I want all of it—”

“Yes,” and he twisted his mouth to seal it to Sam’s. Sam slid his palm against the curve of Sheppard’s skull and then tightened his fingers nto a fist, that way he had, and held his head off the bed while they kissed, and it was good, it was so good, it hurt and John leaned into the pain, moved his hips, shuddered when Sam pulled back to slap him across the face so hard John tasted blood. He tongued his split lip, lunged forward, trying to kiss him again.

“Are you in love with me?” Sam shifted hands, slapped him again, more precisely, with the other palm. “Are you? Do you love me?”

“Yes,” whispered John, and Sam let go of his hair and cupped Sheppard’s face in both hands and kissed him like they were both about to die.

“Can I fuck you, beautiful?”

“Yes,” he said, throat aching, a bright splash of pain across each cheekbone.

“But I need you to do something. I need you to come for me first,” Sam said, and it wasn’t a question, so John didn’t say anything when Sam rolled him over onto his back, just hissed in pain as the welts rubbed against the sheets. “Come here. Oh my god, you have no idea. You never have. Come here,” and Sam was kissing him, his chest slick with sweat against John’s, arms around him, and then Sam was moving down his body and John sucked in a desperate breath, the backs of his thighs on fire against the sheets, and Sam looked up at him and said, “Fuck if you didn’t earn this, beautiful, are you going to let me? Can I have you?” before sliding down and taking John in his hand, and this time John did cry out, and arch, and try to—get away, or press closer, he wasn’t sure, but he managed to say it again, “Please, yes—”

Sam slung an arm across John’s hips to pin him down, and had his legs caged in with his own, and his other hand was a snug hot fit around John’s cock working him over hard and tight. He tried to say _yes_ just in case but the long muscles in his thighs went taut, Sam knew every one of his tells by now and looked up, hand still moving rough and perfect, his other hand now pulling his balls downward with just the right amount of tension, and said, “That’s right, can you come for me now, beautiful? Can you come in my mouth?” with a long lick up the underside of John’s cock and his lips closing over him, a scrape of teeth then warm and wet and sweet, until between the sucking pleasure in front and the screaming pain behind him John couldn’t move, didn’t know which way to move, just lay there strung out between two pulses of sensation and heard himself saying _oh fuck, you’re going to make me, yes_ , tried to warn Sam, who just made a hungry sound and pushed his mouth down harder and tighter, and John twisted, couldn’t get enough air, entire body arching up off the bed, fingers clutching at the sheets until it was too much, it snapped and he spiralled down and hit the bottom of it like a crash, everything flooding out of him and Sam still pulling at him, drawing it out so hard it was another kind of pain and he heard himself saying Sam’s name, still saying _please, please, yes, please,_ although what was he even asking for, something, everything, nothing, just pleading.

“Shhh, babygirl, just take it, just take it,” he heard Sam’s voice saying, his hand still moving over him, when John came back around.

“Yes,” he said, raspy, in case that had been a question, and just the act of saying _yes_ to Sam racked him with another tremor, another spill of liquid, and he bit back another cry and Sam jerked him again, jerked another half-orgasm out of him, then let go of his cock and turned him over. John spread his legs the best he could, felt Sam finger him, not gentle this time, not careful at all, and John didn’t care, he bore down into the pressure, shoved back against Sam’s hand, felt completely insane with it, like he was going to lose his mind if they weren’t as close as they could possibly be. He wanted every square inch of skin shoved up against every square inch of Sam’s, he wanted there to be a space between them only the width of a sheet of paper, a carbon molecule, an orbiting electron. He got up onto his hands, pushed back harder. “Yes, yes _—_ ”

“Easy, beautiful,” Sam’s voice again, low in his ear. “You do what I tell you, right?”

“Yes, Sam,” he said, taking a chance, and was rewarded with what felt like another finger. Sam fucked his hand up into him and he bucked, arched down against the sheets and gasped. “Please, yes, _yes.”_

There was a brief flurry of movement, something, he couldn’t tell what was happening, and then the scratch of denim and bite of metal against the flaming skin of his ass as Sam undid his belt buckle. John felt it hanging cold and heavy on one side of his back, and then Sam yanked down the zipper of his jeans while still pressed tightly up against John’s skin.

“I need—babygirl, fuck, is this really okay,” Sam was panting, setting his teeth at the back of John’s neck and fumbling to pull himself out; John could feel the roughness of Sam’s knuckles moving but not much else. “Yes, God, yes,” and this time he did whine, hips bucking, maddened that he couldn’t see or feel what was happening, beyond Sam biting down on the back of his neck and his hand moving, the other hand holding Sheppard’s throat, too carefully, fingers not digging in, though John wished he would—he wanted to be bruised, choked, fucked, anything, anything Sam wanted, as John writhed beneath him and felt teeth sinking into his neck, heard Sam holding his breath, the snap of a condom, and then something both cold and hot at the same time, the wet chill of lubricant and the thick heat of Sam’s cock. He gasped once, a shocked sound, suddenly wishing desperately that he were tied, that he had something to struggle against, a way to resist what he wanted. And Sam, as he always did, seemed to know this, and pushed him down with all his weight, so that John could press back against him, bodies moving together more like a fight so it wasn’t lovemaking, because he didn’t think he could stand that, his throat and chest burned with unshed tears as it was and he dragged in another breath and moved backward when Sam thrust forward, saying rhythmically, “Yes, yes, yes, _yes—_ ”

“Oh god,” said Sam, sounding wrecked, and twisting John’s face to one side to kiss him. “You’re still hard, is this, can you come from this—”

“Yes,” said Sheppard, even though he was pretty sure he couldn’t, and then needed to ask, needed to know if it was okay. “Yes? Is this—yes?”

Sam laughed, pressed kisses into his temple, wet with sweat. “Yes, babygirl. Yes. So good. You’re so fucking good, and taking me so well, just—come here,” and Sam pulled him slightly onto one side, so that he could lie behind him, and then Sam took his hips in both hands and something changed, Sam groaned against the nape of his neck, gave up and just railed him.

John couldn’t make words anymore, only guttural sounds, noises that he thought in some far part of his mind might shame him, later, once he thought of them afterward, but for now all that mattered was the slap of skin on skin and Sam’s breath coming faster, and his grip getting tighter, and him slowly coming unglued because he was _fucking him_ , Sam was fucking into him and it was unspeakably intimate—he didn’t know how women did this, how they tore their insides open and offered them up to another person, and John reached around behind himself with shaking hands and linked them behind Sam’s neck and pulled him even closer, until Sam cursed and moved both their bodies again, just throwing John where he wanted him, onto his back, and then knelt above him, moving so fast there was hardly an interruption, Sam fucking down into him, John’s legs splayed, one out straight and the other bent, everything shuddering and sweat-drenched and inelegant and disastrously messy and broken and perfect.

“Are you going to stay alive? Are you going to live your fucking life?”

“Yes,” said John, somewhere between worlds, and Sam reached between them to touch his cock, still hard, John’s whole body on fire now with everything he’d thought he would never be allowed to have and that wouldn’t be his anymore, not after this, not now. “Fuck you,” John tried to spit out, starting to come again, but to his horror it emerged as more of a high-pitched whimper, and flat-out ended with a sob as it rippled through him in concentric circles. The first jolt was hard and sharp, the second weakened him, like his body was turning into water, and by the third wave he thought he had a grip on it again, no sounds coming out of his mouth—but that was mostly because he couldn’t breathe or close it because christ it was sweet. In utter alarm he buried his head against Sam’s chest to hide his face, and bit down on the muscle just below his collarbone to stifle the sound that tried to come out with the next wave, shaking with some strange fury at how good it felt, how Sam could make his body do this to him, betray him like this, racked with pleasure and still moving his lips against Sam’s skin in anger, _fuck you, I hate this, hate you, fuck all of this_ ; and craving irrationally for Sam to backhand him at the exact same moment and tell him he loved him. Christ, he was fucked up.

The last few pulses rocked through him and he tried to clamp his legs shut tight, wanting to shove it all back inside, even if it was too late. Sam’s hand was firm against his inner thigh, pressing down just as hard to keep him there. He didn’t want to be there, but he was there.

“No, you don’t get to leave, not yet—look, look at me. That’s it. Look at me,” Sam said, and took him by the hair again, forcing John to face forward. “Look at me and tell me you want this.”

“Yes,” said John, but it sounded like a curse or a lie or maybe a vow.

“I’m going to come,” said Sam. “Are you going to let me keep you, beautiful? Are you going to let me keep you safe? Are you going to let me love you?”

“No,” he said then, utterly defenseless, unable to lie to him even to please him, even not to deny him, and something let go inside his chest and all he could do was wrap his good leg around Sam’s waist, feeling Sam go tense and still above him, and everything hurt but it wasn’t pain, it was flying, it was flying—

•

John came to with a jerk, with Sam bent over the bed saying his name. He had no idea how long he’d been out, but it seemed to be morning and he had some idea there’d been a noise, maybe—his brain parsed it backward—someone knocking at the door? Voices?

“It’s for you,” Sam said. “I’m guessing Really Classified had a tail on you this whole time, because your friend is here. And, no offense, but I don’t think your friend’s from Earth.”

John looked at him for a second, bleary, totally blank, before remembering: _the emails, fuck, I never read the emails_. He slid carefully out of bed, feeling unexpectedly sharp pain in totally predictable places, and into his BDUs, pulling the black shirt over his head as he limped toward the door, raking fingers through his hair. Sam went into the kitchen and started making coffee. John squinted and lifted a hand to the light in the doorway—sure enough, it was Ronon.

They started out leaning foreheads, both of them grinning, until Ronon grabbed him up in a fierce hug that neither of them was willing to end for a long moment, even though John had to bite his lip not to whimper, because pretty much every part of him that could be was sore.

After a lot of backslapping John finally let him go, realizing the reason Ronon looked so strange is that he was in Tau’ri clothes. Somehow they’d found or sewn dark dress pants that more or less fit him, and a tailored pink oxford button-down shirt; it wasn’t the full monkey suit, like at Dad’s funeral, but he looked good, like a professional athlete dressed up for a press conference.

“Why do you live here,” Ronon said.

“I don’t,” John said, which meant two things.

“I had to come in a car. I hate cars,” and John could have laughed out of sheer pleasure, because Ronon never had time for politeness.

“I know you do, buddy. Ronon, this is Sergeant Sam Wilson. He’s—he knows about Atlantis. Sam, Specialist Ronon Dex.”

“Hey,” said Ronon. He didn’t offer anything else, and if Sam wondered what he specialized in, he didn’t ask.

“Please, come inside,” said Sam. “I don’t know if you drink coffee, but it’s on the way.”

“Sure,” said Ronon, and threw back his dreads as he ducked under the doorway like Gandalf. They stood in the entrance to the kitchen while Sam fiddled with his French press, and John realized that for the first time in weeks he felt completely comfortable, as if there were nothing strange at all about hanging out on Earth with someone from P3R-534, better known as in the Pegasus Galaxy as Sateda. Maybe because Ronon had come with him to Virginia. Maybe because he and John were just like that.

“You’ve been gone a long time, man.”

 _Here we go._ “I know, Ronon, and I’m sorry, okay. It’s just—you know, it’s been kind of—” John gave up and made an open-palmed placating gesture that could have meant anything.

Ronon stood with legs slightly apart and looked him up and down, unsmiling. He never hassled John, though; it was part of why they worked, which was weird, because he was the exact opposite of McKay, who hassled him about everything; and even Teyla, who would pretend to agree but then graciously and ruthlessly set about getting exactly what she wanted no matter your objections. Whereas Ronon never gave John shit about things—at least not after he’d said exactly what he thought, but only ever one time. Apparently, just now, he’d already said it.

“Teyla says hello. Kanaan too. Kids miss you.”

“They’re all doing okay?”

Ronon made one of his characteristic gruff sounds. Then: “Nothing’s great right now, but it’s still pretty good.”

John felt himself smile lopsidedly, because this was about the best description he’d ever heard of Atlantis at any given point. Nothing was ever great; but it was all still really, really good.

Then everything got weird.

“Sheppard,” said Ronon, and all at once, John just knew. “You gotta come back. We think we found McKay.”

The world tilted on its axis, just a little, but everything started to slide sideways. John felt Sam’s hand on his arm, grounding him, and in some part of his brain that could still think, he felt distantly grateful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for consensual BDSM activities including spanking, face-slapping, nipple/ball torture, feminization, humiliation, and not-particularly-gentle anal prep. In other news, I love one (1) Satedan specialist. Remember that, in the words of Florence + Her Machine, it's always [darkest before the dawn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbN0nX61rIs).


	28. Trap

Ronon was flying back to Cheyenne the same way he’d come in, Ellington, but Sheppard insisted on driving, so his car could go back on blocks in Springs. He knew he sounded crazy for thinking about the stupid car at a time like this, but the truth is he needed the time to figure it out—all of it. Zelenka and Carter would still be working on the math for a few days anyway, according to Ronon, and it wasn’t like he could help by pacing around and yelling at them; they weren’t Rodney, they didn’t do their best work with an anxious John Sheppard prodding and nagging them. And they’d all have to take the _Daedalus_ back to Pegasus anyway; no one could gate in or out of Atlantis, because Woolsey had the iris up just in case. The working theory, though, was that because of that night’s singular triangulation, McKay’s signature hadn’t been imprinted in the gate’s memory buffer, but its pattern was actually scrambled in the ZP2M.

(“You’re telling me Rodney’s _inside a ZPM,”_ John said, throwing clothes into his duffel and trying not to sob aloud with relief.

“I know,” said Ronon, and grinned. “He’s never gonna want to leave.”)

The goodbye with Sam had been so fast it was dizzying. Ronon waited outside, doing something mysterious with a small object while standing in the driveway, and Sam had put both hands on John’s waist and kissed him, briefly, just once, before giving him a gentle shove toward the door. “Go get your scientist, Shep. Keep the sweatpants.”

“I—but when will—”

“You know how you said sometimes that’s what the job is, and I told you you were wrong? Well, _this_ is what the job is. We’ve both shipped out before. Don’t make it—just don’t.”

Sheppard’s mouth was suddenly completely dry. “What will you do?”

“Go back East in a couple more weeks, probably. Tony keeps trying to get me in the Tower with those guys; might as well take him up on it. You need me, email. You come back stateside—well, Earthside, I guess—you’ve always got a place to stay. Okay, beautiful?”

John was completely speechless. He nodded, and reached out, to touch the side of Sam’s face, but Sam flinched away, and moved toward the door; and then somehow John was standing outside, squinting in the sun, still wearing Sam’s Howard shirt, stunned too deeply for words. 

Because John had never really unpacked, it didn’t take him long to get his things together; mostly he just had to clear out the medicine cabinet and throw out the contents of the fridge. Ronon helped by drinking most of a six-pack. Now that he was about to leave his TDY apartment, it took on a strange pre-emptive patina: places where he and Sam had scened, places where they’d shared meals, talked, fucked. He concentrated on wiping down the bathroom mirror and making sure there was nothing left in the washer and dryer, until at last he locked the place behind them and put the keys back inside through the mailslot. Ronon grunted, looking irritable in spite of all the Dos Equis, and threw his standard-issue backpack in the backseat. John slung his duffel in next to it, and they headed toward the airfield.

•

Ronon slid his seat backward as far as it would go, but his legs still looked cramped. It wasn’t a long drive, though. And he wasted no time getting started on Sheppard.

“So you’re seeing this Sam guy?” He put a spin on _seeing_ that someone must have taught him, maybe Amelia.

“No. I mean, yeah, for a while. It was just a thing.” He made a vacant twirling motion meant to indicate the temporary status of said thing. Ronon looked at him with undisguised pity.

“He seems like a good guy.”

John arrested the gesture in mid-twirl. “Yeah, he…he is. Look, buddy, I know you mean well but I don’t really wanna talk ab—”

“If you're lucky enough to find someone, you should stay together,” Ronon announced, and then turned and stared out the window pointedly, arms crossed over his chest, dreadlocks blowing back in the wind. He still wore Melena’s ring in his hair, John knew, in spite of a three-year-long relationship with Amelia. Or maybe that’s what had broken them up, that Ronon couldn’t move on from losing his wife. John sighed, and sort of wished he’d just called MT for Ronon, instead of driving him.

“It’s complicated, okay.”

“Why?”

John put on his aviators, mostly to hide his face. “It just is.”

“That’s your argument? It’s complicated?”

John opened his mouth to say—something, what, he didn’t know, but Ronon barrelled right over him and kept going, “Does he need to stay on this planet or something? Because Zelenka has those new ZP3Ms now, you could just use the gate. I only came on the _Daedalus_ because of McKay.”

Briefly John considered turning the car around. “I’m not a kid anymore, okay,” he heard himself saying, and kept going even though he was making himself cringe. “It’s not like, just, fall in love with someone, get married, have babies.” _Jesus Mary and Joseph, where had all_ that _come from._

“Yeah, actually,” said Ronon, and his voice was a little softer now, “I think that’s exactly what it’s like, Sheppard. And you should do it.”

Since when had Ronon become such a goddamn talker? More and more, over the years, he’d started acting like Teyla, and neither of them could take a fucking hint. John shot an annoyed glance at him out of the corner of his eye, then paid attention to the freeway long enough to pass a line of semi trucks and drift back into the right-hand lane.

“Even when we get McKay back,” Ronon continued, relentless, and okay this really had to stop, “He’s in love with Keller. He’s never going to feel the same way about you.”

“Look, I’m not sure where you _got_ this idea, but Rodney and me, we’re just friends, it was never that way with—” John began peevishly, but Ronon cut him off, unrepentant.

“Yeah, Teyla said you’d say that.”

“Okay, you know what?” John interrupted, pulling off his sunglasses so he could glare better. “That’s enough out of you. I met someone, I had a fling; that’s it. There’s nothing to talk about.”

“You’re wrong,” Ronon said, so quietly John could barely hear him. “If it was just a fling, you’d totally let me give you shit about it. And that guy cares about you. I could tell.”

“You can’t know that, Ronon.”

“Yeah, I can.” He held up a flip phone, which, what the fuck. “I’ve been texting him.”

Jesus Christ. John blotted sweat off his temple with the back of his t-shirt sleeve, and started looking for the exit ramp.

•

Ronon safely dispatched via Ellington Field, Sheppard tried to focus on not-thinking. He concentrated on looking through the windshield at the I-45, shimmering a little with heat, but more or less immediately glazed over; driving hardly took enough of his attention, so he wound up staring at nothing, not even really parsing the words of the song playing on the radio. It was one he didn’t recognize, only that a girl kept saying repeatedly that she’d have one less problem without you. He knew he should stop and plug in the iPod, but somehow kept going.

The September afternoon light slanted up off the concrete and directly into his eyes, and his brain played Sam’s words over and over, instead of the song lyrics. _If you want_ , Sam had said, that very first night, as noncommittal as always. _See how it feels_. Then: _Are you using your safeword, beautiful? Do you want me to hurt you? Are you in love with me? Are you going to stay alive?_ He was always leaving John an out, always making space for whatever he might be feeling. He never seemed to want anything for himself, and that wasn’t fair, when he was so—when Sam Wilson was—when he deserved—

John cursed and got off the I-10, even though he’d just gotten onto it, and started looking for a place to pull over. Past a McDonald’s and a Kroger, he made a random left-hand turn at a large pink business ambiguously labeled PARTY BOY. A narrow road led him past several truck yards and assorted industrial buildings through to an ate-up residential district. He finally pulled off almost into the weeds, next to a battered wooden sign reading _Olivewood Cemetery_.

He parked, yanked off his sunglasses, threw them in the passenger seat and started fumbling with the Blackberry’s tiny keys.

 _I don’t_ , he started, and then backspaced.

 _when you said_  
_what did you mean by_  
_I just need to know something_  
_hey, it’s John. I don't know if_

He swore again and thunked his head on the steering wheel, which unfortunately didn’t make him any more articulate. This shouldn’t be that hard, it was Sam—he was a _therapist_ , how much easier could he be to talk to. He’d had the guy _inside_ him, for chrissakes. At the memory a wash of heat ran through him.

He scrubbed at his face with both hands, took a deep breath. It was fine this way. Sam was busy anyway; in a couple weeks he’d be off saving the world alongside Steve Rogers, or helping settle twitching veterans of the armed forces. When Sam did get in touch, John would handle it. He’d email back, but not too quickly; make up some joking question about the EXO or Sarah’s kids or the Avengers. He could leave it to Sam to be light and polite in his reply, and not push it any further. It had been a good thing. He was lucky to have had it at all. He could leave it at that.

He got out of the car, favoring his leg, and staggered out into the cemetery to try to clear his head. He wound up leaning up against a gravestone, more lime scale then epitaph; he couldn't even read the name or the dates. Across from him was a giant granite angel, its wings drooping, flanked by grouchy-looking lions. BAKER, said the headstone. His phone made a noise.

5 NEW MESSAGES. John held his breath. FROM: SAM WILSON, MSW.

 _Shep, on the level?_ _I know you have to get back to your people. You know I know how that goes. But I have to tell you something, and I should have told you to your face._

He clicked NEXT.

_You're pretty hard to let go of. You should know that._

Sheppard swallowed against the lump in his throat.

_So take care of yourself, and swing by next time you’re around, if the brass give you enough leeway._

_One more thing: I’m sorry about that night. What I said, about Rodney being your fault. That isn’t true, and I should have apologized earlier. You were starting to be too many things to me, the way Riley was, the way Steve almost was. I was scared, and upset, but that doesn’t make it okay._

It was a quaint cemetery; tiny, overgrown, but well-cared-for. There were rows of small family plots, squares fenced in with low limestone railings, and filled with bright burnt-yellow flowers, tiny daisy-like masses that reflected golden light back up onto his hands and face, the way autumn leaves did back East. And he had something of the same feeling: a biting nostalgia, summer coming to an end and like he was walking away from something he would much rather keep. He closed his eyes, tried to take deep breaths against the swimming in his head.

_But if you change your mind, if that’s even possible. I wanted you to know there’s an offer, and it’s staying open in perpetuity. I can promise you I will fuck up on a regular basis, and, on occasion, I’ll admit it. And I can promise I’d take care of you, if you let me. For as long as you’d let me. That’s all. Out._

His Blackberry pinged again. He looked down at the phone, vision blurred.

 _Colonel, you’re being an idiot._ He frowned, flicked the BACK button. 

FROM: M. RODNEY MCKAY.

No. No, this wasn’t happening; no, John wasn’t doing this again; just no.

“No,” he informed the Blackberry, but the message didn’t go away. He opened it, just in case it was somehow an old one, or maybe—his heart gave a wild extra beat—maybe Sam and Radek had already, surely not—

_Yes, colonel, you’re imagining this. No, I’m not actually inside your Blackberry, stop being a moron. Speaking of which, yes, I meant it: you’re acting like an idiot. Turn around and go back to him._

_Ronon’s right; Sam cares about you, and it’s the real thing. I should know, because I’m you, and I just spent the last few months watching him be selfless, smart, actually surprisingly intelligent for a stunt pilot, as well as gorgeous, did I mention gorgeous, and quite frankly practically a saint for not punching you in the nose on more than one occasion—a temptation I’m not sure I could have resisted, in his position._ __  
_  
__Think about it, John. After all these years of being alone, there’s finally someone you’ve let inside, and he loves you back? I’ve always had a dim opinion of the Air Force but by god it’s about to drop even farther if you don’t get in that horrifying excuse for an automobile and turn around and_ go the fuck back.

Sheppard bit his lip and looked out over the nodding wildflowers, their foliage lacy and ephemeral-looking, like the ferns on M3X-797. Okay. Rodney was usually right, he’d head back, if nothing else he could tell Sam how he felt, like he said, to his face, he—

And then he couldn’t move, because the Kawasaki had pulled over behind his car, and Sam had booted down the kickstand and dropped his helmet by the side of the blacktop, and was walking toward him saying his name, then taking his hands and saying, brokenly, “I could let you leave, beautiful, I could, but goddammit I don’t want to,” and John let the phone fall from his hand into the grass so he could reach for him, and then their hands were entwined and they were kissing, which this time felt like a start to something instead of an ending. John grabbed onto Sam’s leather jacket by both pockets, pulling him closer, but it still somehow wasn’t enough, and when he next moved away to draw in a breath, Sam had him pressed up against the headstone, one hand cupping his head against the pitted white marble, and John suddenly had to fight not to crack up laughing.

“What the fricking piss is so funny, airman,” Sam murmured, and then his mouth was warm and avid against John’s again, and there was nothing to say, he didn’t want to talk anymore ever, just stand here in the beaten molten late hot sunlight and let Sam kiss him dizzy, their bodies pressed together, one of Sam’s knees between his, his other hand loose around John’s throat, their faces so close John could feel his eyelashes brushing Sam’s cheek.

“I have zero idea how we’re gonna pull this off,” John confessed, but Sam just laughed, a warm huff of air across his lips.

“I thought officers were used to that,” he said. “Besides, impossible mission—where do I sign up? I like my chances.”

“I’m old,” Sheppard warned. “Really old. I’ll be fifty soon.”

“Silver fox,” said Sam. “You okay robbing the cradle?”

“Cradle,” John repeated, dazed by the sudden image of Kanaan’s hand-carved one, that Teyla could set rocking with a tap of her foot, and the too-vivid memory of Sam swinging Peri up over his head, both of them laughing. And then he found Sam’s mouth again, and there was no more talking for a while.

They only separated to breathe, Sam’s hand fisted in the front of his t-shirt, John’s fingers stuck in the front pockets of Sam’s jeans, the better to pull their hips together. A mockingbird lit on the headstone across from them and started warbling its bizarre car-alarm repertoire.

“How did you know where I was?” John asked, panting a little.

Sam threw back his head and laughed. “You even asking that tells me you’ve never met Tony Stark.”

“It’s not like you to be creepy.”

“But it’s just like you to slink off without a goddamn word when I act like a fool.”

“The odds of us actually being able to—it doesn’t look good, Sam.”

Sam raised an eyebrow, and John wanted to kiss him again. “We’re gonna get hosed, is what you’re saying.”

John settled for kissing his temple; Sam could probably feel him smiling against the skin. “Yeah, but we don’t know that. Maybe we’re gonna retire on an Athosian gredelberry farm and foster orphans.”

“I have no idea what that is,” said Sam, “but—wait. _Orphans?”_

“There are kind of a lot of them,” John said, like that explained anything. 

“But you, you’d want that.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Okay, yes,” which was the most Rodney McKay thing he’d ever said.

“Orphans,” said Sam again.

“Don’t get stuck on that part.”

“You, me,” Sam said, slowly, like he’d just invented pronouns.

“Me, you,” John agreed, looking away, feeling suddenly evasive. “Something like that.”

“Say it to me,” said Sam, and didn’t turn John’s face toward him this time, just waited. It took a while, but John did it; he raised his eyes from the carpet of tiny pale flowers crushed underfoot, and met his gaze.

“Yeah,” he said, finally. And then just: “Sam,” his eyes clear green and shining.

Sam smiled back, like the sun coming through clouds. “Beautiful, we are gonna fuck this up so bad.”

“I’m good at that,” said John.

“You know, I kinda had that much figured out.”

“You’ve never been through the gate,” Sheppard murmured, tilting his head a little, until their foreheads touched. “It’s weird, the first time. Most people get a little freaked out.” He’d come to love it, the cool blue ripple, the sense of being quietly enveloped by Pegasus itself.

“Yeah, well, those people haven’t had the year I’ve had. After the last six months, walking through a stargate to another galaxy just sounds like another Thursday to me.”

“I held my breath the first time I went through. It’s like walking into water.”

“We’ve gone stranger places,” said Sam; and he was right.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merci mille fois to the usual suspects, you know who you are: bettsfic, cascat, expatgirl, livinginthequestion, & starlessfuture. It took a sparsely populated but highly energetic village. So much love and gratitude.
> 
> Now with [its own conveniently rebloggable Tumblr aesthetic/moodboard](http://aerialiste.tumblr.com/post/183658559026/flyboys)! Spotify playlist to come. Thank you for reading; I love you.


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